First Contact!

Movies about "first contact" with aliens, both friendly and decidedly not.
Updated September 29, 2022
Unbound Librarians
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Arrival
Paper Book
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.
Close encounters of the third kind
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.
Super 8
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
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
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
DVD
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 day the earth stood still
VHS
Classic 1950s science fiction.

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