Signs
My most notable Letterboxd review is a pan of Close Encounters. <PERSON>, who loves <PERSON> as we all do, wanted this to be his version of it. I think this one is way better.
A broken man in an impossible situation relearns how to love and protect his family. <PERSON> crushed it with two great kid actors. Compared to a movie like Independence Day, this is basically a home invasion film. 369
It didn't have to be aliens, it could have been anything (except for the thematic reasons). <PERSON> is a tortured man just barely holding it together, which in retrospect turned out to not be a stretch for him. <PERSON> really didn't need to cast himself as the manslaughtering neighbor. Weirdly for a movie about an atheist preacher mourning his dead wife, this is kind of his funniest movie. It's really pretty cheesy but it works for me unlike Close Encounters.
Also, the shared memory people my age have of that footage of the birthday party being one of the most terrifying things in cinema is some sort of fever dream we all had. It's a tense moment but stop citing it as one of the scariest movie moments of all time. 698