Contact

Sci-fi you can believe. Zemeckis's insistent focus on the female protagonist, with whom we are repeatedly taken back to her childhood, can feel tedious and lengthy at first, but in the end it’s the psychological portrait of an alienated woman fulfilling her life's dreams that dominates the narrative and sets up a solid emotional foundation for the final intradimensional build-up. It's hard to judge, but the political/social hysteria about making contact with outer space is portrayed very authentically and smartly, and although the pacing would lose a race to Professor Xavier at times, the ending is so effective, appealing, and visually charming that it successfully clips all of the flaws into a convincing and meaningful system; there aren't many sci-fi films like this. (07/03/2017)

I really loved Contact from the very first moment and it did not stop amazing me to the very end. Carl Sagan's name as the author of the original is a guarantee that the film will consist of deep philosophizing on the subject of science, faith, truth and knowledge, rather than a shocking portrayal of the first contact with little green men (or other strange things). Strangely enough, the film absorbs all the distinctive parables and ideas without much difficulty, although sometimes their far-reaching aspects and the explicitness of their expressions move on the thin edge of cheesy. Yet the search of the sympathetic scientist for "first contact" (but rather the very nature of knowledge) is riveting and well filmed. It's just a shame that Zemeckis couldn't visually imitate Kubrick's epic 2001: A Space Odyssey... But then I'd be asking for too much... (30/03/2004)

A pleasant sci-fi film that managed to arouse in me an acute and impatient curiosity to know what would happen next, what kind of truths about alien civilisations would be revealed (this is something that the mythology episodes of X-Files manage to do regularly). Pity that weird and long ending. (23/06/2011)

A smartly written story that seems so believable that it could easily happen tomorrow. It perfectly fulfils the meaning of the term SCIENCE-fiction. I've read the book by Carl Sagan, but the movie is even better, strange as that it might sound. BTW, Johny_MH, you are wrong. Contact was not a flop, it made over 100 million in the US, here it fizzled out without much interest. I guess it’s because audiences are not very interested in sci-fi unless there’s cosmic crap and laser beams. I saw it in the cinema on a wide screen and it was my greatest cinematic experience of the year. (16/07/2002)

Solid craftsmanship, wonderful story. Robert Zemeckis' now classic intellectual sci-fi film about whether we are alone in the universe features an excellent Jodie Foster, ably seconded by a young Matthew McConaughey. The gradual narrative doesn't forget the broad scale, showing humanity in all its gullible and skeptical scope. On reflection, the three-body problem is a dark answer to the questions raised in Contact. It fits together beautifully for me now. (25/01/2024)