Contact

Contact is certainly not as shallowly appealing as the famous Zemeckis Back to the Future trilogy, but in the director's filmography and the genre of sci-fi films, it occupies an even more important place. Zemeckis proved that it was possible to make an audience-friendly sci-fi film without cheap genre props and action scenes. Zemeckis is constantly involved in the field of scientific theories and his world vision of contact with extraterrestrial civilization has a realistic basis. The driving forces of the film are dramatic, well-written dialogues, convincingly portrayed character psychology, impressive plot twists, and clever film ideas. The film is very well cast and also well-acted. The budget is adequate for the demanding artistic vision, and Zemeckis luckily had a reputation from previous successful films and was able to impress the producers. Overall impression: 80%. (20/06/2006)

Zemeckis' underrated exploration of space, politics, and most importantly, interpersonal relationships, is something I appreciate more and more each day. From a pleasant and fulfilling experience, it escalated into a film that projects itself into various life situations, dangerously frequently. In my eyes, this is Jodie Foster's life role and probably the centerpiece of Zemeckis' journey towards spiritual rebirth (initiated by Jenny in Forrest Gump and concluded by Cast Away's Chuck). That journey was terribly long and yet completely simple. (03/06/2008)

The director takes care and every shot is thought out to the smallest detail. And when you have have acting aces like Jodie Foster, William Fichtner and James Woods, then success is already guaranteed halfway. Robert Zemeckis is a perfect fit for the project with his filmmaking style, as he didn't turn it into a grandiose sci-fi full of space monsters and tons of visual effects, but rather into a clever and intelligent caper, posing a lot of questions and not giving clear answers. The sweet line about the father fits beautifully, and Jodie Foster delivers a captivating performance. Films about extraterrestrial intelligence can be shot in an interesting and engaging way even without direct physical contact with it. And even though I don't like Zemeckis because of his excessive political correctness and academic bootlicking, this film is awesome. (03/07/2007)

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)

With the adaptation of Sagan's novel, Zemeckis took a bite that I think he's still chewing on now. Contact has such huge thematic sweep that it can't be carried on its shoulders by the big-budget American film model, however much credit it deserves for at least trying. Its attempt to reconcile esoterica and science doesn't completely fall apart in the end (thanks in part to the perfect Foster), however much it fights its way to it through terrible story constructs, but given that the scientific aspect of the film so far has been portrayed by a team of hardy professionals and the religious aspect by the important-looking figurehead McConaughey in the background, the film obviously doesn't quite manage to be so impartial by its very nature. The resulting compromise of "truth is what you yourself believe to be true" rings true in these post-factual times. If you're one of those types who digs into the logic of the scenes in science fiction, and you get queasy at the thought of a religious zealot strapped with explosives getting through all the security to the center of a gazillion-dollar mechanism years in the making, or that no one in the world notices that the same structure has been getting built in Japan this whole time, then tread lightly here. Still, I wonder how incredibly hideous an alien organism must look that has learned that after dragging a human through three wormhole transitions, it had better modify its form into that of the DEAD FATHER OF THE PROTAGONIST to better handle the whole situation. Lol. (01/06/2008)