Contact Movie Download

8 / 10

Contact
What could’ve been a four-star film, instead devolves into a unexpected character reversal and placating of religious and secular viewer both (“We’re not alone”) in a misguided attempt to please everyone but should please no one.

For nearly its entirety (150m), Contact is a bold, engaging tale of interstellar messaging (Vega) with its protagonist, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Foster), giving one of filmdom’s great speeches in her passion plea for “just the slightest bit of vision” from would-be sponsor, HR-Hadden, a John Hurt performance that should’ve nabbed him an Oscar (one nom: Best Sound). But in the final ten climactic minutes as Ellie testifies about her space trip in front of a hostile Senate which seems beset with a collective amnesia, forgetting the tsunami in science-bending advances that enabled construction of her machine, one riding on existitng Einsteinian theory (worm-holes), its “10,000” blueprints no Earthling, not even a filthy rich one, could’ve forged in secret, yet, our heroine completely unravels under what should’ve been easily handled, cynical questions (most from Sen James Woods who might’ve received an Oscar nomination himself) in an over-done show of emotion that completely conflicts with the strong-willed, spirited scientist-turned-space-traveler we’d come to cheer (“No evidence!” As if the Greys are handing out souvenir key-chains to their Contactees) (oy). When your boyfriend (McConaughey), as cool a dude as he be, becomes your only booster, someone in the script department surely lost their writing compass.

I like a good love story. Contact has a good love story. But the theme (planetary coupling) is too big for producers to’ve projected in half-measure. Zemeckis and WB erred in what appears a cave to fears of a status-quo backlash when they seriously deviated from Carl’s novel by dumbing-it-down to implausibility (Senate snobs), maybe to intensify the love (Ellie-Palm), most likely to placate inter-galactic isolationists, i.e., god-fearing folk who worship for many reasons, though, “pursuit of truth” could hardly be called one of them, Joss (3.5/4).

For a film which projects better the hope that religion & science can, not only co-exist but work in harmony, watch Paramount’s 1953 adaptation of HG Wells 1898 novel, The-War-of-the-Worlds. And while you’re movie musing, find the early sci-fi title, Red-Planet-Mars (52) which may’ve been a basis for this 1997 feature. A curious opening contact with the Martian planet by an American science team is wasted when RPM devolves into ridiculous anti-Red, pro-religion propoganda. Pete Graves stars in what proves a continuation of his pain-in-the-neck “Pricehoffer” persona (Stalag17), but the storyline similarities are many, topped by a “Sparks” reference late. Just product from a parallel pelicula universe? Maybe (3.5/4).Read More