First Contact!

Movies about "first contact" with aliens, both friendly and decidedly not.
Updated September 29, 2022
Unbound Librarians
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Arrival [2016 film]
Denis Villeneuve
Based on Ted Chiang's 1998 short story "Story of Your Life," Denis Villeneuve's Arrival is a mind-bending journey into alien contact, human frailty, grief and comparative linguistics.
Close encounters of the third kind
Dillon, Melinda
DVD
Steven Spielberg followed Jaws (1975), his first major box-office success, with this epic science fiction adventure about a disparate group of people who attempt to contact alien intelligence. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is an electrical lineman who, while sent out on emergency repairs, witnesses...
Released only two years after Jaws,Close Encounters cemented Steven Spielberg's reputation as a young director with talent and range.
Contact
Zemeckis, Robert
DVD
An astronomer discovers a signal from another planet and is chosen to go into space on a new spaceship and find its source.
Based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name, Contact stars Jodie Foster as a driven radio astronomer and Matthew McConaughey as a conflicted spiritual advisor in a tense and thought-provoking exploration of human limitations and alien possibilities.
Super 8 [2011 film]
J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams' small-town, big-budget Super 8 feels like a Spielberg movie—in fact Spielberg co-produced—with themes of friendship, loss, and coming of age.
Signs
Marshall, Frank.
DVD
Two brothers wake up one morning and find their dogs barking wildly, and one's children wandering in the corn fields. A mysterious pattern of crop circles have appeared overnight, and the men now must deal with unexplained events.
M. Night Shyamalan's charming but spooky masterpiece.
War of the worlds
Spielberg, Steven
DVD
An earth-shattering adventure that both "rivets and amazes" (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune), War of the Worlds reunites superstar Tom Cruise and Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg for one of the most awe-inspiring cinematic experiences of all time! A contemporary retelling of H.G....
Spielberg brings Wells' iconic novel to New York City. Stars include Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Tim Robbin.
2001, a space odyssey
Clarke, Arthur C.
DVD
A space voyage to Jupiter erupts in disaster when the ship's computer goes mad. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick's imagining of Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 novel. Features first contact, malevolent artificial intelligence, and one of the most mind-bending ending in film.
The war of the worlds
Haskin, Byron
DVD
H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds had been on the Paramount Pictures docket since the silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal....
Byron Haskin's 1955 film moves H. G. Wells' classic from London to small-town California. Special effects are primitive but terrifying.
Predator
McTiernan, John
DVD
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and other 80s action-figure actors are hunted by a malevolent, transparent alien.
Independence Day [1996 film]
Roland Emmerich
Aliens arrive, fireworks ensue.
The Abyss [1989 film]
James Cameron
First contact under water!
The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951 film]
Robert Wise
Classic 1950s science fiction.

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