When You Wish Upon a Star...

So as part of the buildup to its new War of the Worlds rendition tonight, SciFi Channel is playing an all first contact sort of day, right now with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I'm realizing as I'm watching it is probably one of my favorite movies of all time. Not just because it's an intensely cinematic movie - this is, I think, the best Spielberg has ever been as a director, still far enough back in his career to show more of his '70s influences in film, the kind of just-look-at-that silences that modern films like to cover up with a blaring soundtrack - but because of the unique blend of mystery and awe and cynicism and innocence and conspiracy-theory nuttiness that wasn't even faintly duplicated again until Season 1 of The X-Files. There are so many scary-creepy wonder moments in the film - the initial discovery of Flight 19 in the desert, that wonderful shivery revelation capped off by Bob Balaban (also familiar to me as that other science guy in Altered States who wasn't William Hurt or Charles Haid of Hill Street Blues fame) yelling out against the backdrop of a blowing sandstorm: "Where's the pilot? How did it GET here? What the hell is GOING ON?" - but also because of the way the plot unfolds, with a minimum of explanation and a nice parallel to the mystery of the aliens' communication by having Francious Truffaut, a guy who speaks frequently unsubtitled French, as the point man for the contact team. Way to make a nice parallel, and if I go on and on about scenes I love in this film, I'd be here all day.

At any rate, when I started writing this, I thought about how I'd personally argue that the first ten minutes or so of Close Encounters qualify among the best opening scenes in movies ever; the Flight 19 scene is one of the few I can think of that really locked me in from the get-go in such a way that it almost stands alone as a sort of mini-movie, which made me think about other films in which the openings had such punch they were near standalones. ( The short list follows )

Any others come to mind? I'm talking opening sequences that really lock you in.