Spoilers !
Steven Spielberg at 78 has returned to his Close Encounters days with this Hitchcockian conspiracy theory romp which revisits every alien abduction story since the 1947 Roswell Incident
I won’t bother you with the convoluted and silly plot, suffice to say Brits Emily Blunt ( as weather gal Margaret Fairchild ) and Josh O’Connor (as maths analyst Danial Kellner) are two strangers that come together very much like the Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon characters in Close Encounters to save the planet from its own introspection death wish.
As it turns out all the alien visitation theories were right and after much convoluted chasing Blunt and O’Connor revisit their childhoods ( a Spielberg theme) to do the right thing in sharing the information .
You can see quite clearly that Spielberg had fun with this movie . Echo's of North by Northwest, Close Encounters, and ET , come to mind, with signature background music by John Williams completing the nostalgia ( I can’t believe he’s in his nineties! )
Blunt couldn’t be better here, she really is a versatile actress and will be a national treasure rather soon! and the set pieces ( The train sequence especially) is pure Spielberg . But as a whole movie , I was slightly disappointed .
As Janet and I left an old man behind me summed up his feelings
“ Independence Day was better”
After all we are all bloody human .
I have slapped one man in my life. I sucker punched another. The punch was a result of a previous partner pulling a knife at me during a drunken rage ( fuck that! I flattened the fucker ) the other was a slap I regret but I was provoked
On reflection I have only slapped one woman in anger. It was in 1987 in York and I was drunk at the bar in Roxy’s nightclub ….a rather inebriated trans drag queen poked me then slapped me to move and I looked at her and said “ sorry mum” ( she did look like my mother complete with facial hair )
I slapped her back , and in the afterglow got bitch slapped again for my trouble .
I woke up with a black eye and a fat lip, lol, she was a tough old bird
Ps
On the back of yesterday’s post, I will share these paragraphs from an email from a reader which rather moved me.
“I don’t need to shop for food items, but I pretend to. A chat to the teller can be quite engaging as long as they aren’t too busy to share a conversation. I try to alternate stores too because I don’t want to be known as the sad lady who chatters far too much.
There was a talk at the bookstore last week and even though I’m not a reader of fiction , I went for something to do. The author looked shy and ill at ease, so I spent time sharing anecdotes with her and she hugged me, with one of grateful hugs which made me burst into tears right THERE AND THEN. I’m not a crier John but I cry every day John, every single day.
I cry when I read of your village, and wish I was there. I cry when I will miss Mary, a dog I have never met and I cry when you do something kind for someone because I wish you were doing it to me.
Is that sad?
I read many blogs of worth which give me company but I don’t comment even though I was once a person of some minor note in the academic field. A wife, agood friend, a person of interest who could hold her own at a faculty cocktail party full of strangers.
Your blog touched a nerve with me yesterday, and if I wore a bra ever again. I would hike it up, like you have often done in Going Gently and will try to solider on as you do.”
