I watched E.T. for the first time in a decade and it filled me with more wonder, heartache and genuine goodwill than any movie all year. Spielberg's domestic fairy tale about lonely outsiders had me in tears. In a filmography full of masterpieces, it's one of Spielberg's best.

E.T. is a spookier, stranger, moodier film than I remembered. It may be Spielberg's most surreal movie; many moments play as a child's waking dream. The mammoth and mist-soaked forests, the bicycle and the moon, the astronauts, the Jungian psychological connection between them.

The adults in E.T. are often scarier than the T-Rex in JURASSIC PARK. Almost always shot from child-height and rarely panning up, they have an elemental menace that is deeply unnerving. At times, E.T. is an otherworldly paranoia thriller. Even in the end, adults are oppressors.

I forgot E.T. is an often wordless film. Many of the best and most famous scenes––the opening, E.T. meeting Elliot, E.T. at home alone, the moon, the climax––rely almost entirely on the power of Spielberg's images and John William's amazing score. Shots flow together like music.

also: it is god damn uncanny how Henry Thomas has the exact same inflections as a kid in E.T. as he does as an adult in HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE