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
Dreyfuss, Richard.
DVD
Released only two years after Jaws,Close Encounters cemented Steven Spielberg's reputation as a young director with talent and range.
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 [2002 film]
M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan's charming but spooky masterpiece.
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 Day the Earth Stood Still [1951 film]
Robert Wise
Classic 1950s science fiction.
The war of the worlds
Barry, Gene.
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.
War of the Worlds [2005 film]
Steven Spielberg
Spielberg brings Wells' iconic novel to New York City. Stars include Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Tim Robbin.
2001: A Space Odyssey [1968 film]
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.

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