Film | Kids

One of the most intimate and imaginative depictions of childhood in Hollywood cinema, Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning classic follows a lonely suburban kid’s friendship with a goggle-eyed, saggy-fleshed alien abandoned on Earth by a mysterious spacecraft.  An instant classic upon its release, the film caused veteran New Yorker critic Pauline Kael to rave: “Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. The tears are tokens of gratitude for the spell the picture has put on the audience. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors.”