E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

1982

Steven Spielberg built a suburban fairy tale out of a broken family and a stranded alien, and it outgrossed everything that came before it. Henry Thomas plays Elliott, a lonely middle child who finds something hiding in the toolshed and decides to keep it. Drew Barrymore plays his little sister Gertie, Robert MacNaughton his older brother, Dee Wallace their mother, and Peter Coyote the government man circling the house. Spielberg shot most of it at a child's eye level, which is why the adults stay faceless for so long.