Rating: 
Summary: Awesome! A great movie to buy.
Review: I have always been fascinated by space-related things, this movie got me fascinated. I enjoyed very much this movie because it keeps me interested through the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: I Need More of A Ending
Review: The lead in was great. Good details, very interesting suspenseful story. I just thought the end was way too fast, almost if he said, enough of this - lets end it. I am looking for the second half of the story. The book was better then the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Uneven script, but I loved the leads
Review: Jodie Foster is Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a brilliant radio-astronomer obsessed with making contact with intelligent extra-terrestrials. Unable to relate to real people on Earth, where she's ridiculed for her obsession, Ellie now searches for life beyond it. Complicating things are her boss, Dave Drummlin (Tom Skerrit) a weasel who'll do anything for funding, but also Palmer Joss (Matt Mccaunaghey) as a new age evangelist (he calls himself a "man of the cloth, without the cloth") who speaks to those spiritually unsatisfied at the 21st century's dawn. While Drummlin threatens to yank Ellie's funding, Joss stands to steal her heart entirely. Forced to seek private funding from a consortium headed by the shadowy SR Hadden (John Hurt), Ellie is at the ebb of her career....on that day when somebody returns her call.With the world electrified by the mysterious communication, seeming iron-clad proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, Ellie must now confront a host of even newer complications, like James Woods as a purely odious national security adviser. (Though this is supposed to be set in Clinton's administration, Woods's character seems largely based on his Roy Cohn act, one he used again in "Chaplin" - his lines consist of little more than reactionary theories about the mysterious message). When the communication turns out to be the design for a spacecraft, the US reluctantly busts its budget to build it, while the prospect of extra-terrestrial intelligence brings out the worst in America's fringe elements. This culminates when a test-run of the system is tragically sabotaged by some shadowy types we're supposed to assume are religious fundamentalists. (Not all the stock villains are on the fringe; Rob Lowe plays a character obviously patterned on Christian Coalition frontman Ralph Reed, a young and handsome spokesman for conservatism who has the ear of the politically connected and his speech is tinged with the southern accent Hollywood always uses to clue us in to its meaninglessness) Ellie fiercely competes for the second chance at the trip, and the stage is set for the journey of a lifetime. Well.... I'm not sure whether the climactic trip was a comedown or not, but the rest of the film clearly shows what the script's problem is. Much of Contact deals with the confrontation between science and faith, with the script taking a dim view (ala Ben Bova) of religious types. Joss is the only real character with a religious bent, though much of what he says isn't as religious as simply dismissive of modernity, and he gets to spend the night with Ellie just to assure us that he's the sort of religious nut we can like. The rest of the religious characters - none of whom have real speaking parts - remain as a threat to the scientifically established order, our own homegrown Taliban. The problem is that the script isn't as sure of where Ellie stands as it seems to think. By the end of the film, we see Ellie realizing that her obsession with otherworldly life rests on faith to no less degree than that held by your Sunday-go-ta-meetin Churchgoer. The film treats this as ironic, even though we've realized from about the first that Ellie is something of a revivalist nut under her scientific pretensions, ready to leap to the first prophet who can bestow her needed funding (in this case, the shadowy Hadden). Despite an uneven script I enjoyed "Contact" largely for Foster and Mccaunaghey's performance - though they don't spend near enough time together, they work our a sort of warm fuzzy chemistry, something like unbreakable love across an interstellar gulf.
Rating:
Summary: for the first time in history, the movie was better.
Review: contact is one of my favorite movies. it has content, something lacking from most hollywood drivel. i figured, the universal rule is that the book is always better than the movie, so i should read the book. i was vastly dissapointed.
the movie seemed to be more well thought out, have a more consistant theme, and have more parallelisms and symbolisms with respect to religion and science. there were differences on the order of detail, up to major plot changes, and in each and every case, i thought that the movie version was far superior.
this is, without a doubt, a rare case where the movie is better.
Rating:
Summary: Multiple reflections.
Review: This DVD has the best commentary on special effects that I have ever encountered. One of the people responsible for those effects comments that this is the only movie which he still had to work on after seeing the preview, though he is sure the people who saw the preview never noticed the subtle effects which had not been added yet. Everything in the movie seems to reflect a level of involvement that real life rarely offers, creating a tension which is so great that the best scene in the movie was cut because someone laughed at that point in the preview. I might have laughed myself, if I was there. The level of disagreement about life on other planets is intense, and evidence that something far more advanced might be observing us is as frightening as this movie makes it seem. My favorite disagreement was about whether a chair would be necessary for space travel. If the design for a pod doesn't include a chair, don't try to take one. Philosophy might also be better if it wasn't an excuse for getting some university chair, which is not the kind of philosophy reflected in this effort. Embarking on this trip, which presses the limits of what might happen at the speed of light, could easily be considered more thrilling than the finer points of any philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: One that all should read
Review: Arguably, this is the greatest science-fiction book ever written. Nearly impossible to put down once you've picked it up, its blend of extremely plausible fiction and sociological prediction is, in my experience, unmatched. You will find when you read it, that you are swept away in how real it all seems. The movie is similar to the novel, but the ending is far better explained and more believable. Contact also provides a profound, soul-searching question to all of us, spiritually and scientifically, from the first chapter to the last awe-inspiring page.
Rating:
Summary: Loved This Book
Review: Let me first say I'm not a "reader" by nature, so it's rare for me to say that I "love" a book. This book is deserving of the "love" label, because once it grabs your attention, it doesn't let go. I seem to have a short attention span usually, but Carl Sagan wrote a great novel that doesn't overtake the reader with too much scientific mumbo-jumbo. There is science stuff every once in awhile, but nothing that overpowers the reader -- it's VERY easy to understand. The story goes very in-depth with each character, but leaves just enough questions in the readers mind to keep up suspense. If you liked the movie, you'll like the book. If you hated the movie, you should read the book -- it explains SO much (they are very similar, excluding a couple things). Great book overall.
Rating: 
Summary: Three little words: Read The Book.
Review: Read The Book. A brilliantly written saga dedicated to furthering mankind's intellect, outlook, and inner peace. The movie didn't understand that. It is dedicated to furthering the career of Jodi Foster. Little beyond that. Even if I am wrong (which happens), please read the book before embarking on the magical, mystical voyage of cliches that you will presented with here. You will be a better person for it.
Rating:
Summary: Bought this for my daughter..
Review: Although the science fact here is lacking, the science fantasy is wonderful. But what was important to me was the rare character of the woman scientist. It was for that reason that I wanted my 10 year old daughter to see this, and own this film. It is not often that girls can see themselves in the characters of science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie almost ruined by a ridiculous ending.
Review: This movie would have rated an easy 5 stars if it had not been for the horrible ending. Great performance by Jodie Foster. Jodie plays Ellie, the astronomer who is obsessed with listening for signals in outer space. I really got caught up in this movie and I expected a great ending. What I got instead left me scratching my head. All that effort and trouble for what? They figure out the alien message and build the huge machine that will propel one person to another planet. Ok, fine so far. Ellie gets propelled through space and sees things that no other human being has ever seen. Still good, and the exictement is building. She gets to this incredible looking planet and gets greeted by one alien who transforms into her dad. Huh???? He basically tells her that they don't know who designed the machine, but they send out messages to other races and "invite" them to their planet. They send her back to Earth where she finds out that only a second or so of earth time has passed while she was away. Huh???? Her camera recorded only static and there is no evidence that she ever went anywhere.
So, my question is, what was the point??? Why did this sophisticated intelligence go to all that trouble to talk to one person on the planet and then remove all proof that the trip ever took place? Gee, couldn't they guess that this individual would be considered a crazy person back on their planet? So what was Ellie supposed to do with this information?? This was such a let down that it left me angry with this film.
Now I understand that the producers were probably making this film more about faith than astronomy, but they could have made a better ending. Even with that, where does the faith aspect come in. The preacher was trying to convince Ellie about faith in something that can bee seen. Well, she did see these events unfold. So what lesson did she learn from all this??
The producers could have done a much better job with this ending. There is just no logic to it.
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