h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Has to be, hands down, Steven Spielberg's 1982 film, ET: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL.
A film that works on some many levels it is a true human experience. For one, it works on the level of a moderate science fiction lark about a young, msiunderstood boy who happens to befriend an alien that looks like a cross between Mickey Rooney and a peanut. Hilarious hi-jinxs ensue, there's sadness and hapiness, death and life. And a big space ship that looks like a disco light.
But it also works as an allegory about life. It is about discovery, friendship, loss, kinship, siblings, happiness, marital disharmony, individuality, love and hate. It mocks the military and police (the military are son inept the allow three spotty 14 year olds on BMXs to steal the only specimen of an alien being. The police set up road blocks with gaps between them so wide they could have got through if the kids had stolen a fire engine).
And it also works as a film that is designed to tear you into shreds from the beginning. Pitching a balance between mild scary horror (Elliot's discovery of ET) to gloopy romance (Elliot's mind controlled wooing of Erika Eleniak aided by a sozzled ET)and then to a simple story about two friends who simply don't want to lose each other. Powered by beautiful performances from all players and a soundtrack that even when I hear it today I feel like bursting into tears like a hungry 7 month old baby, ET is a film that sets out to make you cry and, even after repeated screenings, does so with aplomb.

I've never seen a film as moving as Sophies Choice
so I'm surprised no one mentioned it. So I will.
this film is so appalling sad, that after I made a friend watch it, she hurtled at me, with tissue in hand, beat me around the head and shoulders and said "You rotten B******d , how could you make me watch that?"
The feeling of the dreadful choice the main charactor has to make is the most potent thing I've ever watched, and I'll agree that ET was sad too, but this one takes the doughnut, for getting inside your head and never leaving.
Meryl Streep took an oscar for her performance.
It really is powerful