Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind has been granted a brand spanking new 4K restoration and plays at the Lighthouse this week. Richard Dreyfuss gives a career best performance as the suburbanite who finds himself contacted by an alien race. With a sense of wonder rivalled by few other movies, it defined the term ‘Spielbergian’, and really can’t be missed on a big screen with John Williams’ iconic score booming out of the speakers. This version is Spielberg’s director’s cut, the superior edit of the movie.
The Lighthouse continues its season of movies centred on journalism with Terry Gilliam’s madcap Hunter S Thompson adaptation Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Monday and David Fincher’s Facebook drama The Social Network (I’m not sure how this one fits the theme) screening on Friday and Saturday.
South Korean cinema has become known for its innovation in recent years, and action thriller The Villainess is supremely impressive on a technical level, with first person perspective action set-pieces that appear to defy the laws of physics. Its plot, about a female assassin attempting to quit her line of work, is far too derivative of better movies however, and the script leaves a lot to be desired.
By Eric Hillis of themoviewaffler.com