Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

This is an okay movie. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), an electrician, is sent to discover the source of widespread power outages. While in his truck he sees a flying saucer causing various objects to be flung around. He tells his wife of the experience but she doesn’t believe him and after watching his strange behavior takes their children to her sister’s house. Several people who witnessed the lights of the flying saucers are now seeing an image of a volcanic structure and hearing five musical notes, without knowing what they mean.

UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek developed a scale which describes the level of interaction with an unidentified flying object; the third category includes seeing a physical being with the craft. There were a series of studies performed by the United States Air Force, known as Project Blue Book, to research unidentified flying objects. The project started in 1952, but was stopped in 1970. The small aliens in the final scenes were played by local girls in Mobile, Alabama. Ray Bradbury declared it the greatest science fiction film ever made. The film won an Oscar for Best Cinematography.