If I took the time to dredge my memory and think it through, I could come up with 20 or 30 movies that I found riveting and pulse-quickening when I first saw them in my teens and 20s, but felt like pale, under-energized remnants when I re-watched them as a wise but creased adult. But I haven’t the time right now. (I have to leave at 10:30 am for an 11 am screening.) The best I can come up with are two letdowns I’ve already written about — Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and John Sturges‘ The Great Escape. Surely there are scores that qualify in the thorny minds of HE readers.
