Starring: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Jena Malone, Geoffrey Blake, William Fichtner Directed By: Robert Zemeckis Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Region Code: 1 Release Date: December 30, 1997 Running Time: 150 minutes Theatrical Release Date: July 11, 1997
Product Description: Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster stars in this visionary drama based on Carl Sagan's novel about human kind's first encounter with extraterrestial life directed by another Oscar winner Robert Zemeckis.Running Time: 151 min.System Requirements:Starring: Angela Bassett Jodie Foster John Hurt Rob Lowe Matthew McConaughey David Morse Tom Skerritt and James Woods. Directed By: Robert Zemeckis. Running Time: 150 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 1999 Warner Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 085391504122
Amazon.com: 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
Could have been so much better 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!!! 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 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 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.
"I'm okay to go!" I saw this movie when it first came out, and at the time, although I didn't really understand the premise, something about it stuck with me as I grew. Now, after purchasing this movie and having had the opportunity to sit and watch it again, I see that it truly is a work of art.
Jodie Foster does an amzing job in her role as the first person from our world to EVER make "Contact." While many others shoot her thoughts, ideas, and hopes down throughout the movie, she never wavers once! Standing firmly in her convictions as a scientist, she aims to make believers of us all.
Although I am not a big Matthew McConaughey fan, he does a solid job as Foster's polar opposite. Another thing i liked is, although they are very opposite in opinions of the world, they can co-exhist and share one common thing: love. Now, you may be thinking "oh there's a love story here?" Yes, but it never distracts from the overall story; and at a crucial part, even helps to enhance it further.
Very, very solid acting and storytelling in this one. The directing is also some of the best I've seen. Add this to the astounding special-effects used, and you have yourself a pretty good movie!
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