Close Encounters streaming on The Criterion Channel ahead of Disclosure Day

This weekend marks the release of Disclosure Day, and Steven Spielberg returns to his sci-fi roots. Ahead of that, his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is now available on The Criterion Channel, a rare streaming opportunity for the Academy Award-winning feature.

Made after Jaws' box-office success, Close Encounters finds Spielberg taking a personal, dramatic approach to science fiction. He was one of the few filmmakers to write the film, and although it was successful on release, it is one of his features that isn't often discussed as among his best.

The story follows a wave of inexplicable events: airplanes found in the middle of nowhere, strange lights across the globe and otherworldly sounds from the sky. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) becomes obsessed after an encounter with a large aerial vessel, Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) searches for her abducted son Barry, and UFO specialist Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) tries to connect the dots.

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