When you’re a child, you have no idea what you’ll remember forever. Forty years after it was first released in theaters, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial is like an iridescent memory, an immortal lightning bug in movie form. It’s one of the finest fantasy films ever made, and the most tender of all the works from director Steven Spielberg. That’s why people who saw it as children remember it to this day, and people who first saw it as grown-ups can revisit it and still see something new. E.T. is a renewable resource, a childhood memory seeded in a time before we had any idea how valuable and cherished those memories would become.

On Newsstands: 5/6/22 - 8/8/22