Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3606 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-09-25
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen, Dolby, Digital Sound, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Arabic
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 144 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest)reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contactdeserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio film making on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

Video Description
DVD Special Features

Interactive Menus
Production Notes
Scene Access
Trailers
Language in Dolby Digital 5.1: English
Subtitles: English/Arabic/English for the hearing impaired

Synopsis
Devoted astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway undertakes an emotional and spiritual journey after receiving the message she's waited for all her life--a mysterious signal beamed in from alien beings, who pass along instructions for building and piloting a craft that will presumably survive the passage from Earth to their home. While struggling to fund her mission, Arroway also struggles with her feelings about the nature of things, particularly after meeting a charismatic New Age believer who questions her disbelief in God. A deliberately-paced, meditative adaptation of the eponymous novel by Ann Druyan and "pop" astronomer Carl Sagan, who died during production. Academy Award Nomination: Best Sound.

Customer Reviews

Rare treat - intellingent sci-fi!
To anyone who thinks that science fiction is about action-packed escapism, with ray guns and scary monsters, as all those who have jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon in the last 25 years would have us believe, watch this film. Science fiction can be plausible, intelligent and - shock, horror - have things to say just like any other form of drama. I have a personal fondness for this film for that reason, and therefore am prepared to forgive its occasional lapse into schmaltz. It's refreshing to see something that gives us a credible glimpse into what our first contact with an alien intelligence might actually be like, and how we might react to it.
Also this disc represents top value for a DVD:... here's what you get for your money:

*No less than THREE full-length audio commentaries - one from Jodie Foster, one from the director and producer, and one from the Special Effects men. And these are genuine commentaries too, not cobbled together from interviews - they are with you as you watch the film, commenting on everything you see as you see it. Together they are a wonderful eye-opener into how a film like this is made.
* Isolated music score - this option means that the film is silent for a lot of the time but provides a fascinating alternative way to view many scenes.
* Special effects featurette; sort of a technical showreel showing how many shots were composited -even the ones that don't look like FX shots.
* Production notes, the usual scene access & trailers

None of this is the cheap promo stuff that is thrown carelessly onto many discs; somebody cared enough about this film to make a real effort. all of this means you have to watch this film at least four times before you're exhausted all the disc has to offer.

If you haven't seen the film, watch out for spoilers in the other reviews on this page.

Genuinely uplifting piece of hokum
Overall an excellent, intelligent film with good performances. The other reviews have concentrated on the opening sequence which is nice but a bit obvious visually - but the sound tracking back through time and eventually switching off is a great touch). But the virtuoso performance technically has to be the scene with the young girl running for the medicine cabinet - an apparently innocuous scene but watch it again and try to figure out how they could have done it - the whole scene appears to have been shot through a mirror which is fixed to the bathroom wall, yet starts downstairs and travels upstairs and into the bathroom in one continuous shot. It's a shot Hitchcock would have been proud of and it's always good to see a commercial director showing that he still has some artistic sensibilities and can do more than paint by the numbers. Sometimes the ethical elements of the plot are laid on with a trowel, and John Hurt is far too hammy and out of place from the general atmosphere of the film to be anything other than an annoyance but Jodie Foster gives a strong central performance and the movie hangs together nicely by the end. The arguments about spirituality against science are somewhat contrived but that does little to detract from a genuinely uplifting and inspiring story. Great to see a piece of science fiction that actually treats its viewers as intelligent human beings who can perhaps understand a plot that goes beyond boy rescuing Californian beach volleyball princess from evil emperor while retrieving mysterious plastic crystal and saving the world. Watch it, and restore your faith in earthlings.

Something Very Different and Unique
Contact is something completely different. It's belongs to the the ever diminishing group of sci-fi with brains. Because of this. It's very understandable that it gets negative feedback from the friends of no-brainer sci-fi. Actually i find it quite funny how many people have criticized the ending of Contact, saying that they were disappointed when they didn't see how the aliens looked like. I think that was one of the least important things in this movie. Still, i would've been disappointed if there had been some green alien with tentacles or one of those little grey Roswell aliens. Instead, they made an excellent choice and didn't show us the aliens at all. Really good and brave decision. In my opinion, if you were disappointed when you didn't see aliens, you didn't really understand this movie.

The religion vs. science setting is really interesting and realistic. It's fits extremely well to modern day life and i have never seen it done better in any film. The best thing about it is that the film doesn't take sides. It just portrays both of them and leaves the decision to the viewer.