Jodie Foster Movie:

				Salesrank:
		MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest) reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation, but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contact deserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio filmmaking on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

Contact [Region 2] Reviews:
Unspeakably terrible movie
2008-08-01 - I am shocked and disgusted that this movie has received such a high rating. Hands down, this is the worst movie that I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through.

Could have been so much better
2008-06-11 - First, the very opening of the movie is fantastic - almost worth the discounted purchase price by itself.

The special effects are really quite good.

The acting ranges from good to poor but, is generally passable.

The story development and character interactions are OK if one hasn't read the book.

However, if one has read the book there is such a distortion of both characters and their interactions and loss of sophistication and nuance as to be quite maddening.

Ah, for what might have been!

I Love This Movie!!!
2008-06-07 - I have always been a science buff and a science fiction fan. This movie was wonderful. I think it is not far off to what our reaction would be if we were contacted by others in the galaxy. Jodie Foster was wonderful as Ellie Arraway and the spirit of the book was carried over into the film. The film does take some liberties with characters and what occured in the book but that was only to make it fit into a 2 hour movie.

Very enjoyable
2008-06-03 - I thought this was a very interesting movie and that it was made believable by the great perormance of Jodi Foster. If another actress had tried to pull this off, it might not have worked. This is not your usual "contact with extraterrestrails" movie and that makes it refreshing too. Also, we get some real science tossed in. Cosmos fans will undoubtedly recognize some of Sagan's lessons scattered here and there.

What a waste
2008-06-02 - How can such a wonderful concept be twisted into such a horrible movie? I confess I did not read the book. This jaded view of science and politics was extremely uncomfortable to watch. I would hardly call it entertainment... I've had root canals that were more enjoyable. Taking what could have been an uplifting idea and producing from it this movie, may have been an accurate portrayal of the human condition, but it was hardly a happy experience IMHO. Yech.