First Contact!

Movies about "first contact" with aliens, both friendly and decidedly not.
Updated September 29, 2022
Unbound Librarians
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977 film]
Steven Spielberg
DVD
Dreyfuss is a man obsessed in Spielberg's science fiction fantasy that celebrates the possibility of friendly extraterrestrial life."
Released only two years after Jaws,Close Encounters cemented Steven Spielberg's reputation as a young director with talent and range.
Signs [2002 film]
M. Night Shyamalan
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 [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 mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the "Dawn of Man...
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 [1953 film]
Byron Haskin
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.

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