Contact

Rating:
Summary: Contact, Best Movie Ever Made!
Review: Contact is the best movie on earth check it out today! END

Rating:
Summary: Contact: The future of DVD?
Review: This is an excellent example of what the DVD format can offer film fanatics. "Contact" was one of the most visually impressive movies of 1997, though it may yield to "Titanic" in its visual effects. The DVD presentation includes three feature-length commentary tracks, in addition to appendices on the various specific scenes.

Common to Robert Zemeckis' "Forrest Gump," the film has the enticing/distracting presence of various television personalities including the morphed/edited/stood in for President Bill Clinton. "Contact" is not hurt by its leads: the driven, believable Jody Foster, or the moral cowboy/guru Matthew McConaughey. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here's hoping "Titanic" gets the the same special presentation when it comes to DVD. END

Rating:
Summary: A WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO THE LATE CARL SAGAN
Review: This is the best movie I have ever seen. It is Jodie Fosters best performance. Contact presents the subject matter in a believable, intelligent, and thought provoking way. Go see this movie. It will change your beliefs and the way you look at the sky. END

Rating:
Summary: The Best Movie I Have Ever Seen
Review: Words cannot describe this movie. You must go out and see it. Jodie Foster's best experience I ever seen. Matthew McConaughey is also excellent. Carl Sagan would not be disappointed END

Rating:
Summary: Excellent spellbinding movie!
Review: I thought that "Contact" was a bit boring at first when I saw it back when it came out in 1997 but I was much younger then and now that I'm older, I later have found this movie to be really amazing and powerful.

The moivie is the tale of a woman who when searching the skies through a radio telescope picks up a mysterious signal that is not from a human made radio device and this causes a frenzy across the U.S. and her goal is to find out what it is by menas of special machines the size of large apartment buildings to make 'contact' with the sender of this mysterious signal.

This movie is just amazing. I at first didn't like it a whole lot back then but now I think it's one of the smartest sci-fi movies made in the 1990s and I strongly recommend this movie. It may be a bit slow in parts but overall, this is a highly rewarding movie and is one of Jodie Foster's best movies of her career to date.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent And Interesting.
Review: Let's say that proof of alien life was found with the radar, satellite stuff we have poking around space, then the events that would take place would probably be very much like those in "Contact," and that is the beauty of the film. Robert Zemeckis' movie cleverly takes a look at what would happen if we discovered evidence that we are not alone. It sets itself apart from blockbuster science fiction like "Independence Day" because of how realistic it is, how convincing and plausible. The screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by Carl Sagan, is filled with interesting characters, but more with interesting ideas. We also appreciate how they add philosophical arguments into the mix. Most science fiction films don't really explore the debates about God and science, this movie does, by letting the two main characters debate about the issues. The movie is also entertaining on the dramatic angle and the special effects are wonderful to look at. The movie has style and realism mixed with science and deep philosophical issues. I have nothing against the "cool" stuff like "ID4" or "Mars Attacks!" but "Contact" is a breather for people looking for something smart and thoughtful. It has detail, great performances and nice photography. A very good movie.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite movies
Review: One of my favorite subjects as I was growing up and into my early 20s, was backyard skywatching and astronomy. I believe this movie accurately portrays the emotional aspects of science in general and astronomy in particular: the sense of awe and beauty when confronted with infinity, and the sense of lonliness felt by everyone with an idealistic passion.

If you have ever read Carl Sagan's books, you'll see that this movie touches upon the usual staples of a Carl Sagan read: the foundation of religion vs. the foundation of science, the mutual misunderstanding and struggle between those governed by curious optimism versus those governed by primal fear, and a demonstration of the dangers of a world that depends on science which is filled with so many people who do not understand it.

Some have argued that they find Contact to be "preachy." I don't really see much of a foundation in that assessment of the movie. Just like in real life, the ultimate philosophical answers are left wide open at the end of this movie, leaving it open to many different interpretations. And I think it's refreshing to see a movie that doesn't follow the contemporary pattern of avoiding any serious discussion about morality and philosophy. These are some of the conversations the human race will be forced to have with itself if we want to survive the coming centuries. Recent events since this movie was released and Carl Sagan's death only accentuate the importance of facing this fact.

I love this movie. From the beautiful computer-generated opening sequence, through the middle sequences detailing the main character's relentless and passionate quest for scientific knowledge and exploration, to the adventurous surreal climax, I felt that I had a personal connection with almost every aspect of this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Conflating science with religion.
Review: When I first saw this movie I was still a Christian and had not read the book. I thought the movie was wonderful in exploring the ideas of faith and how we need to take care of one another to counter the loneliness and alienation of modern society.

A few years later, in which I had renounced my faith, I decided to read the book. Then, as luck would have it, the movie happened to be on TV the very next week. My eyes were opened to the horror that is this movie.

My first major problem is that Jodie Foster's character in the movie is a dedicated, brilliant scientist who just goes completely irrational when confronting love. (Which makes one wonder if she thought the alien encounter up to help herself.) In the book, Palmer Josh never has a relationship with Foster and is only present to express a moderate voice of religion. Watching the character be butchered into a lonely spinstress was terrible.

Secondly, the book has nothing to do with matters of faith. In the book, five individuals are sent and all of them meet the aliens. There is no message of loneliness but of amazement at how far man has come and what is left to do. Furthermore, one of the great underlying messages was that Foster's character, unlike individuals who use a sacred scripture, was trying to understand the world through reason. That reason was a legitimate avenue of knowledge for even areas of meta-physics. The aliens tell Foster in the book that they are decoding their own messages, not ones from the sky but messages embedded deeply within transcendental numbers.

The book supports critical thinking, reason and work to reach knowledge whereas the movie tries to equate all science with religion and that we are all just people with faith. Sagan critiques of religion and the close-mindedness that it fosters is completely dumped by the movie.

Thus this movie is decent unless you like characters who can think and aliens that don't look like humans. For me, this movie fails to be the intellectual bridge between science and religion that it subtly purports to be while at the same time is insulting in steriotyping woman of science as argumentative, loners who go weak when confronted with affection. (I am a man not a woman and I still found it offensive.)

Rating:
Summary: A movie worth watching!
Review: Contact, brings to the screen the likely scenario of the S.E.T.I. program and/or others like it, successfully establishing contact with an extra-terrestrial civilization.
Jodie Foster and the rest of the cast carry out their performances pretty well.
The only setbacks are in relation to the "love story," which seems forced and is rather weak, as well as what seems to be a lack of chemistry between Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.
Aside from that, the plot and the setting, are both EXCELLENT! In addition, it is one of those films that gets you and keeps you thinking long after it's over. Contact is a movie guaranteed to provide an evening's entertainment.


Rating:
Summary: Wonder and Elegantness, Awe and Loneliness, Fear and Hope
Review: Anyone remotely familiar with Carl Sagan must know that getting away from the lights of a city, and looking up, leaves one to feel a flurry of emotions about it all when viewing the heavens at night. How can we be intelligent enough to build all of these tools to use, and still have room for doubt about the why? What if humans on an insignificant planet in the Cosmos actually did pick up a signal or make 'Contact' from outer space? How brave would you actually be? The movie 'Contact' presents this loneliness with a gentle and loving manner. The movie presents the greatest challenge -- do we survive, despite ourselves here on this insignificant speck like a grain of sand in all the grains of sand in all the beaches of the planet we live on? It really is not thought that humans would end it all, being even made to feel smaller than previously before by receiving advanced technology from aliens meant to meet this 'Contact', or is it a weapon?
But then again, they are extremely more intelligent, and give us hope, and fear, about the why and the what and the who and the how, but where are we, as humans, really at within the Grand Scheme of It All? The movie shows that the answer these questions give leave all even smaller and less advanced then we previously thought and still leaves the possibility open with all the awe and wonder Carl Sagan sought to show when talking about the Cosmos. The movie presents all of this with all the technological wonder it can muster at this Time and in this Space called SpaceTime. But then again, perhaps Carl Sagan should be remembered most for his love of life, and his thoughtfullness on why we as humans ought to survive and not create a Nuclear Winter Scenario by having a Nuclear War, a Holocaust due to hate and stupidity on this Planet Earth, in the Sol System, in the Persus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of the local group of 50 galaxies traveling together through SpaceTime at around 33 miles/ second traveling towards the SuperCluster Cluster of Strings of Galaxies near the Virgo Constellation only reaching that part of SpaceTime in another 300-400 million years, and still will we survive or make 'Contact' in that SpaceTime while we all are traveling in this SpaceTime and still find that everything else has moved that was there before in that region of SpaceTime, but yet find the strength and courage needed to survive? Perhaps, that is religion, perhaps it may be common sense, perhaps many emotions, some of which we may not have even discovered yet. Perhaps........ we are not alone afterall!
Perhaps!