Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #52 Contact
Box Office: $100.9 Million
Oscar Nominations: Best Sound
Oscar Wins: None
MovieRankings.Net: 71/100
Available To Stream: Amazon Prime ($4)
The first act of this movie is fantastic. Hearing the signal. Then the chase from the government and the private sector to get a handle on what's happening. The realization that it is rebroadcast of Adolph Hitler at the 1936 Olympics only to figure out that it's the first signal that the aliens would have received because it would have been the first transmission powerful enough to leave Earth. Finally, we get the true reveal: that they sent us instructions to build something.
The rest of the movie can't hold up to that same quality. It drifts from there into a forced debate of religion vs science. Then it really regresses into a movie shoving needless special effects down our throats. Also, the total lack of chemistry between Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey is painful to watch. It's such a mismatched couple for so many reasons, obvious and not. Also, for a movie that is so well casted (James Woods, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt and David Morse), it's a wild reach to ask us to accept Matthew McConaughey as a Christian philosopher.
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Even with those flaws, I still really enjoy this movie. Romance aside, Jodie Foster is perfectly cast as Ellie Arroway. She's a smart enough actress to absolutely believe her as a scientist. She does a really great job in this and makes you believe she is making contact with aliens. It feels authentic, especially in the beginning.
This is also Robert Zemeckis' career in a microcosm. The first half of his career tells stories about people where special effects do take place but aren't the story. In the later half, he loses his way with movies like The Polar Express, A Christmas Carol and Welcome To Marwen. Something snapped and it became more about the spectacle he could make as opposed to the story he could tell. I don't think the guy that made Cast Away can tell a good story about people again.
I hope I'm wrong. He has a movie coming out next year called Here. The concept sounds great. It tells the story of events that happen in a single room over the stretch of many decades and it stars Tom Hanks. However, the more I read into it, it's focused on special effects that de-age actors using AI technology.
Sigh.
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks