Rev. Danny Fisher

Those us interested in the academic study of religion and film were given a nice gift today by Hulu.com, which made Steven Spielberg’s 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind available for free online. I’ve always been interested to teach a course on religion and film, and I don’t know why one wouldn’t include Spielberg’s richly rewarding film on the syllabus somewhere. (Scholars Paul V. M. Flesher and Robert Torry are with me on this to a degree, it seems.) An incredibly powerful, emotional, and exhilarating film–one of our greatest American films any way you slice it–you should make a point to watch it if you’ve never seen it. See it for free online anytime here.