Rating: 
Summary: Overrated and mediocre dvd quality
Review: I vividly remember seeing "CE3K" as a teenager and I especially remember the ads with the long stretch of highway and the ominous quote "We are not alone!". Seeing the film 25 years later makes me wonder what all the fuss was about. This has to be one of Steven Spielberg's most overated films. It resembles a tv mini-series, long and plodding, and follows a select group of characters and their experiences with UFO sightings and abductions. I'm all for character development but most of these characters get stale really quick and you just want them to get on with it! As with many early Spielberg films, there are lots of noisy, irritating kids and messy houses which are meant to represent suburbia. After a long hour and a half, these people finally make it to Devil's Tower, where the aliens arrive and communicate with humans. This sequence is still dazzling, but basically just amounts to a spectacular light and sound show. And, oh yes, that five note tone gets really irritating by the end of the movie!I was disappointed with the quality of the dvd as well. There is a highly noticable "shimmering" in the interogation scene between Dreyfess and the government agents. Also, the night sky scenes looked uneven with streaks of gray overlapping the blacks. Many scenes were "soft" and uneven. The bonus disc, however, is very nice and contains great interviews and a documentary about the making of the film.
Rating: 
Summary: The memory was better than the video
Review: I remember seeing this at the theater and thought the DVD would be a good addition to my collection. My memory of the story was better than the DVD turned out to be. Too many special effects have happened since this movie first came out, and they make the ones in Close Encounters look contrived. I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought it would. If you find it on sale you might want to pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Poor picture quailty.
Review: I purchased CLOSE ENCOUNTERS when the DVD first went on sale and was very disappointed with the picture quality. The night scenes - of which there are quite a few in this film - display very uneven levels of "blackness", resulting in a splotchy effect that is very distracting and detracts from the viewing experience. Playing the same discs on a different DVD player and television produced the same results. I can only assume that mine is not the only CLOSE ENCOUNTERS DVD with this flaw, and I am surprised that the quality control folks at Columbia Pictures did not catch this problem and correct it before shipping the product. I contacted Columbia weeks ago, but have not received a reply.
Rating:
Summary: So-So
Review: Yes, I know I am bucking a trend, but I have never been particularly impressed by this film. There are several reasons, but all of them radiate from one point: director Steven Spielberg. I have seen most of Spielberg's work, and I have consistently noticed that Spielberg has the habit of taking on potentially deep material and then trivializing it via excessive sentimentality. This is perhaps most clearly seen in his production of THE COLOR PURPLE, but it is a problem from which CLOSE ENCOUTERS is not immune; like most other Spielberg films, it suffers from a clear case of the cutes. That aside, Spielberg is always extremely obvious in the way he addresses his material; once the basic premise has been established nothing new is added, and his films develop a static quality in terms of everything from cinematography to story line. In the case of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS it is largely the latter problem which I find most troublesome, for within half an hour or so--even before you are clearly aware of the full story line--the film achieves a strangely predictable feel. Because of this, I have always found that the film feels rather slow and somewhat longer than it actually is. This is not to say that CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is a bad film. Even though I tend to dislike his films, I freely grant that Spielberg is one of the best craftsmen working in the film industry, and he always gives good value in terms of craftsmanship: everything, from cinematography to art design to performances is very slick. But I personally like something that goes a bit deeper than superficial slickness, and in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS superficial slickness bound up with a "feel good" message is really all you get.
Rating: 
Summary: Truly a great movie...
Review: Steven Spielberg went all the way with this cut of CE3K. It includes all the scenes he originally wanted and eliminates the ending that was forced upon him by the studio for the Special Edition. Truly a wonderful version of this great piece of cinematic art.
Rating:
Summary: I love this Movie!
Review: I remember this movie and think about it as the time when Steven Speliberg was really, really good. It seems that after Empire of the Sun, he became obsessed with approval and approbation than being a great filmaker. I thought the DVD was very good and I really appreciated being able to practice reading Thai again. It is very rusty and looking at the subtitles help immensely.
Rating: 
Summary: Hasn't Lost its Magic
Review: We live in an area of New Zealand which has a large rock outcropping similar to that shown early-on in the film, so wanted to view Close Encounters once again to see how close the resemblance really was. That said, we went on to get just as enchanted by our latest viewing as when the movie was first released. Definitely a classic! (And the local rock formation is really quite accurate!)
Rating:
Summary: We Are Not Alone
Review: Nearly a quarter century since it was unleashed, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND ranks as one of the supreme cinematic achievements of the modern era. Steven Spielberg wrote and directed this tremendous science fiction film with his own distinctive middle-class view on things. Richard Dreyfuss is at his usual terrific best in the role of Ron Neary, another of Spielberg's "Everyman" characters. He is an Indiana power lineman who is called out on a night where the entire city of Muncie goes dark. Then, at a railroad crossing, he is suddenly shocked by the appearance of a UFO, flooding him with brilliant white light. This encounter soon turns both him and his life upside down; his wife (Teri Garr) and kids can't understand his obsession with turning the shape of mashed potatoes or mounds of dirt from his backyard into a mysterious mountain he's been seeing in his mind. Meanwhile, a lonely mother (Melinda Dillon) has her own close encounters with the UFOs, resulting in the still-unseen aliens abducting her son (Cary Guffey). She too has visions of a mysterious mountain, visions which find their way into paintings and colorings. When the news comes on TV with word that a train supposedly loaded with deadly nerve gases has overturned in northeastern Wyoming, however, both Dreyfuss and Dillon know the locale--Devils Tower. In spite of government officials closing the park off to outsiders (the nerve gas leak is an elaborate cover story), Dreyfuss and Dillon witness, along with a noted UFO expert (Francois Truffaut, director of the 1969 classic THE WILD CHILD) and hundreds of others, the first actual close encounter of the third kind--direct physical contact between Earthlings and extra-terrestrials. Spielberg's film was obviously a radical shift from most previous Hollywood depictions about outer space visitations to Earth. He evokes the famous line "Watch The Skies" from Howard Hawks' 1951 classic THE THING, but does so without the paranoia and hysteria of the space invasion films of the 1950s. There are no lasers or bug-eyed monsters. Because CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was made after America's twin debacles with Vietnam and Watergate, it takes a low-key but rather apparent questionable view of the military and the government--as Stephen King put in his book "Danse Macabre", a "don't-let-the-military handle this" approach. In its scope and approach, this movie is closer, in a middle-class way, to Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which Spielberg has always numbered among his favorites, than to any sci-fi film of the past. Dreyfuss and Dillon are excellent in their roles, as is Truffaut; and as for John Williams' score...what more needs to be said; it's brilliant. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (also known as CE3K) won an Oscar for Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography, though four other men (William Fraker, Douglas Slocombe, John Alonzo, Laszlo Kovas) are also credited. Well conceived, suspenseful, occasionally terrifying, and finally uplifting, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is yet one more staggering masterpiece for a director with a whole lot of masterpieces still to come.
Rating:
Summary: SOME PEOPLE MIGHT ENJOY IT
Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind tries to pass itself off as science fiction, when actually it's a fantasy. The screenplay was based upon the book The UFO Experience, written by the professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, Dr. Allen Hynek. While the book sticks to the facts and doesn't jump to conclusions, the same can't be said for the movie. All goes "according to plan" until the ending-- when for some reason they decided to toss the book out and write a sappy ending. I guess the director felt it would be more entertaining that way. Also, why did he call it Close Encounters of the Third Kind? At the end of the film both species *communicate* using musical notes and hand gestures, thus it should've been called Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind.
Rating:
Summary: highly boring
Review: this is a completely boring film and one of Spielberg's worst films. Usually his movies are fantastic, like Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, or even E.T., but this so damn slow and plodding! And this is coming from someone who loved Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey! Trust me, this movie is worthless, watch it only if you want to fall asleep in front of the TV.
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