If this photo alone isn’t enough to make you nostalgic, you are horrible.

I’m a pretty emotional guy, but I usually don’t cry at movies. I’ll get chills or goosebumps, but I don’t cry. It’s not a macho thing; it’s just the way my eyes work, I guess.

Up until a couple weeks ago, the only movies that made me tear up were Air Bud and The Rugrats Movie, a pretty standard duo (OK, it’s probably not standard to cry at The Rugrats Movie). In Air Bud, it happened when Josh yells at Bud to leave and says, “I don’t want you anymore.” Pretty brutal stuff. In Rugrats, I lost it during the scene in which Tommy yells at Dill in the pouring rain with Dill powerless to talk back because newsflash: He’s a crying baby.

Anyway, I bring this up because about a month ago, I teared up again. I was home, sitting with my family on the couch, aimlessly flipping through TV channels, not satisfied with what was on but not tired enough to go to bed. My eyes lit up when I saw E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on ABC Family. There was only about a half-hour left in the movie, but whatever — we’d all seen it before, and the ending is incredible.

What I had forgotten was just how perfect that ending is. The last half-hour of E.T. is a magical, powerful sequence with few equals in movie history. It’s got Elliott bringing E.T. back to life just by caring about him, which should be cheesy but is instead incredibly moving and artfully done. (How do you find out E.T. has come back to life? A wilting flower begins to grow after Elliott walks away from his dead body. Genius!) It’s got the classic bike chase sequence, with Elliott and his friends dashing away from evil government agents as they race through director Steven Spielberg’s suburbia, beating cop cars with their bicycles. E.T. lifts the group of young kids into the sky, and even though the “flying over the moon” scene is more famous, I stand by my belief this “sunset flight” is an even better moment.

And of course, the end of E.T. has those killer moments of perfection. The glorious spaceship landing, with E.T.’s mother visible as a shadow inside. E.T.’s goodbyes to Elliott and his family with that all-time great movie quote: “I’ll … be … right … here.” The last shots Spielberg has made a career out of: tight zoom-ins of the characters’ faces, looking up in awe as the ship flies away. Elliott, of course, is the last face we see as the screen cuts to black.

It’s easy to watch this, get emotional and then question: Why the hell is a movie about an alien — a relatively ugly-looking one at that — making me cry? Well, a big part of it is certainly the very human performance from then-11-year-old Henry Thomas (The Last Ride) as Elliott, who strikes a chord with anyone who had a childhood. It’s also the fact that E.T., despite being a technological creation who doesn’t speak much, is a full-fledged character with desires, needs and affection. And of course, it’s the loud, blaring strings of John Williams’ score reminding you at every scene, especially the very end, “This is where you cry.”

It’s the 30th anniversary of E.T. this year, and a special edition Blu-Ray is coming out to honor it. What’s remarkable is not only how well it holds up, but if you’ve seen it before, you can watch the last 30 minutes on their own and feel exactly the same chills you felt when you saw it the first time — you’ll probably cry, too.

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