First Contact!

Movies about "first contact" with aliens, both friendly and decidedly not.
Updated September 29, 2022
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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.
Contact [1997 film]
Robert Zemeckis
DVD
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
DVD
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.
War of the Worlds [2005 film]
Steven Spielberg
DVD
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
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.

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