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.
Contact [1997 film]
Robert Zemeckis
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
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.
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.
The War of the Worlds [1953 film]
Byron Haskin
DVD
Includes War of the Worlds (1953, Earth is being invaded by aliens, and not even bombs can stop them) and When Worlds Collide (1951, a distant planet is about to land on Earth, and it's up to one astronomer to convince the entire world).
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
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 [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.

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