‘Close Encounters’: Five notes you’ll never forget

Few movies can be described by merely humming a tune.

Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” can be described by humming not just a tune but merely five notes.

If you’ve seen the film – and so many of us have – you know the notes I’m talking about. They go something like this: duh-duh-DUH-duh-DUH.

This is the kind of communication that can happen between one alien species (ours) and the next (the characters who emerge from a spaceship from far, far away).

I mention this because there’s still time to drive over the Coeur d’Alene, if you’re so inclined, and see “Close Encounters” at the Regal Riverstone Stadium Cinemas on a big screen. The film shows at 7 p.m.

Or you can, as I will, stay home and watch it on my television. “Close Encounters,” both the Director’s Cut and the Original Version, is streaming through a number of services, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and more.

Either way, you’re likely to spend the rest of your evening humming that self-same five notes.

Don’t blame me for the earworm. Blame Spielberg.