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.
Attack the Block [2011 film]
Joe Cornish
South London teenagers fight aliens in this small-budget British sci‑fi comedy. The talented cast includes a pre-Star Wars John Boyega.
Close encounters of the third kind
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
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
Writer/director J.J. Abrams teams with producer Steven Spielberg for this period sci-fi thriller set in the late '70s, and centering on a mysterious train crash in a small Ohio town. Summer, 1979: a group of young friends are filming a Super-8 movie when a pickup truck derails a speeding train. When...
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
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, 1946-
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
Kubrick, Stanley.
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
Byron Haskin's 1955 film moves H. G. Wells' classic from London to small-town California. Special effects are primitive but terrifying.
Predator [1987 film]
John McTiernan
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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