Contact (1997)

Purely Joyful Movie!

A Brilliant Conflict

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Robert Zemeckis's Contact is based on Carl Sagan's famous novel by the same name and it is one hell of a film. Rightly called the thinking man's science fiction this movie contains many awe inspiring scenes. The opening shot which pans back into space, quietly humbling us by reminding our insignificance, the transmission and receiving of the signal, the machine and teleportation of Jodie Foster in it to meet the "makers", this film is filled with such scenes and joining them together is a fantastic story with an excellent pacing. Contact polarized critics but this is a very good film and features some great performances by Jodie Foster, Mathew Mcconaughey and others.

Robert Zemeckis's Contact is based on Carl Sagan's famous novel by the same name and it is one hell of a film. Rightly called the thinking man's science fiction this movie contains many awe inspiring scenes. The opening shot which pans back into space, quietly humbling us by reminding our insignificance, the transmission and receiving of the signal, the machine and teleportation of Jodie Foster in it to meet the "makers", this film is filled with such scenes and joining them together is a fantastic story with an excellent pacing. Contact polarized critics but this is a very good film and features some great performances by Jodie Foster, Mathew Mcconaughey and others.

People that talk about "dumb religiosity" in this movie really miss the point. It is not religious in the slightest, rather it includes a sweeping panorama of the tension between science and religion, whilst skewing the horrendous evil of human greed and the truth of how we're all charged with coping with our seeming separateness. It's a beautiful work of art, one of my top three movies ever. Spine-tingling line of the movie - John Hurt to Jodie Foster; "wanna take a ride?"

What a cool idea for a movie: blending the physical with the metaphysical, science with faith! That's the intriguing basis of this film, and it is done well in so many ways. What it could have been called, however, is "See...Screwed Again!" because of the ubiquity of scenes of Jodie Foster, the most stridently sincere and undervalued person on Earth, getting cigarettes put out on her forehead at cocktail parties, or having someone stuffing a sock in her mouth at a meeting. ("They're doing these things just because I'm a girl!" is written all over her face.) OK, that cigarette thing and all didn't really happen, but they virtually did: Jodie gets jazzed about S.E.T.I., so what occurs? She's pulled from the project. Her conveyed reaction: "See...screwed again!" When the funds for the antennas in South America dry up, JF's take: "See...screwed again!" She gets turned down for money by the bigwigs: "See..screwed again!" Her semi-priest boyfriend nixes her chance to go on the mystery trip: Take it, Jodie: "See...screwed again!" Right, right, right...she doesn't say those words, BUT that is the perpetual demeanor of this character! After a while you feel wrung out by virtue of witnessing all the injustice foisted upon her...just because she's a girl! "Contact" is very engaging and heart-warming, provided you ignore the draining anxiety of Jodie. It would have received an 8 but for her. If she reads this, no doubt, even her neighbors will be able to hear: "See...screwed again!"