It may be resigned to rest in history as the //other sci-fi movie of 1977, but Spielberg’s alien encounter flick is a dazzling journey in its own right and strangely it’s one whose ending seems at odds with the saccharine schmaltz that Spielberg would go on to become known for. While E.T.’s climax is a case in point, all teary-eyed goodbyes and family drama resolutions, Encounters concludes in exactly the opposite way, as Richard Dreyfuss’s Midwest family man abandons his family for a life in the skies with the alien visitors. It’s a conclusion Spielberg readily attributes to his youthful naivety but this just makes it all the more honest and confounding.