Screen Rant

5 best films about space exploration (& 5 the worst), ranked according to imdb.

Space is something that humanity has been fascinated with for centuries. Here are the best and worst movies about space exploration based on IMDb.

Space is something that humanity has been fascinated with for centuries. It has always felt unattainable, mysterious, and something that is just out of our reach but at the same time, we have long yearned to explore and understand. Space exploration has long since been the core subject of many films and many works of literature.

RELATED: Sci-Fi: 10 Best Outer Space Survival Films  

Space is an enigma filled with wonders beyond human comprehension so it's no wonder that over the years, filmmakers have utilized it as a setting. Some have done so with success, whilst others, not so much. Below are 5 best films about space exploration and 5 the worst, according to IMDb.

Best: Europa Report (2013) - 6.4

jodie foster space travel

This little gem of a film is sadly, largely underappreciated. Europa Report is atmospheric and its storyline very gripping. The film doesn't rely too heavily on special effects and instead focuses on developing its story along with its characters.

RELATED: 10 Thrilling Deep Space Dramas

Since release, the film has been hailed a success and is often compared to 2001: A Space Oddysey for its realism and its pragmatic approach to space travel. Europa Report shouldn't be missed under any circumstances.

Worst: Doom (2005) - 5.2

Doom 2005

Adapted from the  video game of the same name, Doom offers very little in terms of style and intelligence. Despite the acting prowess of Karl Urban and Dwayne Johnson , they alone fail to provide substance to this otherwise empty shell of a film.

Whilst fans of the game may appreciate what the directors and writers were attempting to do here,  Doom just turned out to be another film to add to a long list of failed video game adaptations confirming the fact that video games should just be left alone.

Best: Sunshine (2007) - 7.2

jodie foster space travel

The fact that Danny Boyle is an exceptional director is well established. He has a plethora of outstanding movies under his belt, one of them being the mind-blowing tour de force that is Sunshine . Cillian Murphy heads up the cast in this intriguing film.

Sunshine is a blend of sci-fi , psychology, and mystery essentially being everything a fan would want. Heavy influence has been taken from other great works of science fiction, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Danny Boyle's intelligent mind crafted something that is both visually dazzling and intellectually challenging.

Worst: Red Planet (2000) - 5.7

Red Planet 2000

Released in 2000, Red Planet was a complete and utter failure, both critically and commercially. Which isn't necessarily a surprise considering the poorly thought out and abysmally executed storyline.

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It adds very little to the vast sci-fi archive of exceptional films and it is a film that probably shouldn't have been made in the first place. There are many, much better space exploration films to choose from and Red Planet should not be one of them.

Best: Contact (1997) - 7.4

Jodie Foster in Contact (1997)

Contact may not be seen as a space exploration film per se. However, the story does explore the discovery of alien life, in space. Plus, it really doesn't get any better than Contact . Jodie Foster completely steals the show with her compelling performance.

The film also explores some truly mesmerizing visuals throughout, especially in its second half when contact with alien life is established and Jodie Foster takes a colorful trip through space. Contact is certainly up there as one of the greatest, most satisfying science fiction films to date.

Worst: Armageddon (1998) - 6.7

jodie foster space travel

Despite its commercial success upon release and boasting an extremely talented cast, Armageddon is sadly an unsatisfying dive into inaccuracy, predictability and in all honesty, a subpar plotline with no ambition. The film focuses too much on action and not enough on character development paying very little mind to how incoherent the story really is.

RELATED: 10 Best Outer Space Horror Movies

As far as space exploration films go, Armageddon can not be relied on as a successful take on the intricacies of space travel and only serves as a flippant, badly thought out action drama.

Best: Moon (2009) - 7.9

Sam Rockwell standing in a space suit in Moon

Sam Rockwell's unyielding talent is widely known and regarded but it is especially apparent in this outstanding film. Moon is an excellent depiction of the true horrors of isolation and a truly fascinating exploration of the complex intricacies of human emotion.

Praised for its scientific accuracy and Rockwell's outstanding performance, Moon delivers a moving story with a satisfying twist. A recommended film for any fan of hard sci-fi.

Worst: Event Horizon (1997) - 6.7

Sam Neill as Doctor Weir at the end of Event Horizon covered in scars

Despite the stellar cast, Event Horizon fails to live up to the promises of its intriguing premise. Sadly, Event Horizon is neither scary nor is it an effective Sci-Fi film. It starts off well but quickly turns into a monotonous mess, heavily relying on special effects rather than focusing on the actual storyline. Essentially a huge disappointment in terms of style.

However, despite its many pitfalls, this film has garnered somewhat of a cult following over the years and this is perhaps because, whilst the film isn't what it wanted to be, it is in its own way, quite entertaining.

Best: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - 8.3

jodie foster space travel

Stanley Kubrick is a world-class director, renowned for his myriad of groundbreaking films. 2001: A Space Odyssey   is possibly one of Kubrick's greatest films and is often wildly regarded to be one of the most influential films of all time, its influence seen in many films since its release. It garnered a massive cult following upon release and to this day, the impact remains monumental.

RELATED: 10 Great Atmospheric Sci-Fi To Watch If You Liked 2001: A Space Odyssey  

It is one of those films that you have to watch a few times to appreciate the intricacy of the story. Adapted from Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name, 2001: A Space Odyssey was also praised for its special effects and visuals, which were quite innovative for the time. Kubrick's beautiful but harrowing film is still talked about to this day.

Worst: Passengers (2016) - 7

jodie foster space travel

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence lead this rather dull science-fiction romance . The chemistry between the two actors is certainly undeniable, however, it doesn't overcome nor rectify the very apparent weaknesses that plague Passengers .

The storyline is derivative, predictable, and doesn't offer much in the way of excitement. It is quite frankly, a film that added very little in the form of substance to the genre and is best left forgotten and unwatched to gather dust.

 NEXT: 15 Best Sci-Fi Horror Movies That Blend The Genres Perfectly  

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, at the intersection of science, politics and faith.

jodie foster space travel

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Watching the film again after 14 years, I was startled by how bold it is. Its heroine is a radio astronomer named Dr. Eleanor Arroway ( Jodie Foster ), who is an atheist. In the film she forms a cautious relationship with Palmer Joss ( Matthew McConaughey ), a believer in God who writes about science. Key roles are played by science advisors to the President, who see aliens, God and messages from space all in cynical political terms. They justify their politics with the catch-all motive of "national defense."

When the movie was released in July 1997 I had more or less the same beliefs I have now about the existence of God and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Yet reading my review I find the movie didn't seem as brave to me then as it does now. Perhaps that's because I've since become involved in so much discussion about Creationism, another topic that stands at the intersection of science, politics and faith. Hollywood treats movies like a polite dinner party: Don't bring up religion or politics.

The encrypted signal, when opened, contains plans for the manufacture of an enormous machine, apparently a space craft of some sort, which will presumably take a single human to a meeting with the alien intelligence on a planet circling Vega, the fifth brightest star in the night sky, about 25 light years away from Earth.

A key element of the film involves Congressional hearings to determine who should be the astronaut aboard the ship. Although an international team of candidates has been selected, the cost of the ship has mostly been paid by the U. S., and for political reasons the astronaut will be American. Ellie, whose team received the message, is one of the candidates. At a late point in the hearings, Palmer Joss blindsides Ellie by asking her if she believes in God. She answers honestly. This raises a question: Should the first human to meet an alien believe in God? Ellie loses the prize to her boss, David Drumlin ( Tom Skerritt ), an opportunist who has taken credit for her pioneering work in SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). That she eventually ends up making the trip owes something to the actions of another true believer.

The movie is based on a novel by Carl Sagan, who told us with such joy that there are "billions and billions of stars up there." As a child fascinated by the stars, Ellie asks her father ( David Morse ) if there are humans on other planets, and he tells her: "If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space." The quote is often attributed to Sagan. Despite her disbelief in an afterlife, Ellie has always yearned to meet her mother, who died in childbirth, and perhaps that was what drew her eyes to the sky as a small girl. Later, as an honored academic, she turns down a teaching post at Harvard to work on a SETI project in Puerto Rico. Funding for that search is withdrawn by the hypocritical David Drumlin, who doesn't approve of pure research and believes science should provide "practical results."

"Contact" was directed by Robert Zemeckis , whose work often employs daring technical methods. Remember his mixture of animation and live action in the pre-CGI days of " Who Framed Roger Rabbit " (1988). Look at the way he embedded Forrest Gump (1994) amid real people. Look at the way he used motion capture in " The Polar Express " (2004), " Beowulf " (2007) and " Disney's A Christmas Carol " (2009). In "Contact" he startled his audiences by using real CNN anchors to cover the story in the movie, and embedding an obviously real President Bill Clinton.

Clinton didn't actually act in the movie (his scenes sound appropriate but could be about anything). But those were real CNN people. Was it proper for reporters to play themselves in fiction? Network president Tom Johnson said at the time that the experiment was a bad idea, and would not be repeated; that memo apparently didn't get read. What worked in "Gump" as a joke struck a false note in the greater realism of "Contact."

In "Contact," I was particularly absorbed by the conversations between Ellie and Palmer, the atheist and the believer. They like one another; indeed, they even go to bed once, but love is cut short because Ellie can do the math and realizes if she gets to travel on the alien machine the logic of moving at light speed means no one she knows will be alive when she returns--including Palmer and their children, if any. Still, he loves her, and much is made of a little plastic toy he finds in a Cracker Jack box--a compass. But if the woman he loves doesn't believe in God, she shouldn't make the trip. (The various astronaut candidates presumably believe in different Gods, but that's only a detail.)

I will not describe what happens to Ellie after she takes the trip. There was much debate at the time about whether she, in fact, ever left earth, although a line of dialog about 18 hours of static seems to be significant. The more you think about the logic involved, the more fascinating the movie becomes. The original signal received from space is the first television signal ever broadcast on earth, and since we know when that was, we know how many years it would have needed to make the round trip.

That suggests at the least an alien program to search for such signals and bounce them back along with code for a series of prime numbers, a universal indication of intelligence. What else does it suggest? That the aliens are still alive, or only their program? What would be the purpose of their machine? Actual physical space travel, or an experience not unlike the one had by the hero of "2001," who finds himself in an environment that has apparently been created by information in his own mind? What does she learn from the aliens of any use? What could be taught?

Jodie Foster is an ideal candidate for the role of Ellie Arroway. Smart, to the point, she explains that the purpose of Science is to discover Truth, wherever it is. That's where scientists disagree with Creationists, who believe they already know the Truth and it's the purpose of science to find the truth they know. You can see how that could engender some uneasiness about pure research; the danger is that you could find out something you don't want to know.

Matthew McConaughey's character is a good and sincere man, but I was confused by his ability to turn up everywhere. Just because he's written books on science and religion, why is he mysteriously invited to every high-level meeting and given so much influence? Another problematical character is Joseph ( Jake Busey ), who is way over the top as an evangelist, and curiously immune to routine security procedures.

The strength of "Contact" is in the way it engages in issues that are relevant today, and still only rarely discussed in the movies. Consider the opposition to stem cell research, which in a sense is "pure research." Consider the politicians who disparage separation of church and state. When Ellie was asked by Congress if she believed in God, the correct reply would have been, "that is none of your business." That would have been the correct reply of any American, no matter whether they believed in God or not.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Contact movie poster

Contact (1997)

150 minutes

Rob Lowe as Richard Rank

James Woods as Michael Kitz

Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss

Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor Arroway

Angela Bassett as Rachel Constantine

Tom Skerritt as David Drumlin

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William Fichtner as Kent Clark

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  • James V. Hart

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The 'Contact' Movie Explained: What Does the Ending Mean?

Do you believe in life in outer space .

The 'Contact' Movie Explained: What Does the Ending Mean?

I'm a sucker for science fiction movies. I love stories about worlds far away from our own. But sometimes the rare science fiction movie lets us stay on our planet, during our current timeline, and allows us to dream of something bigger than all of us. One of my favorite movies with this premise is Contact .  Contact  is a 1997  film  directed by  Robert Zemeckis .

The movie was  based on the  1985 novel  by  Carl Sagan . It stars  Jodie Foster  as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a  SETI  scientist who finds evidence of life sending a message from outer space. The movie weighs science against faith as it attempts to unwrap the mysteries of the universe. 

The cast of Contact is incredible, with Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse also starring in major roles. There are also some amazing twists and turns, with the ending of Contact being a really fun maneuver that throws us for a loop. 

Today, we're going to get the movie Contact explained. We'll go over the Contact movie plot, the Carl Sagan book, and talk about how the author of Contact saw his vision come to life on the big screen with Zemeckis' superb direction. We'll also talk about how this Jodie Foster space alien movie represents a more low-key science fiction. 

Let's jump in. 

Table of Contents

The Contact Movie Explained: What Does the Ending Mean?

In order to understand the movie, we're going to have to dig inside the movie and go over key plot points and characters, and then sum up the ending. So the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to look at the Contact movie plot first. 

The Contact (1997) movie summary

We’re zooming through the galaxy as the Earth gets smaller and smaller. We hear lots of radio frequencies and then zoom through a wormhole back to Earth where we meet a young Ellie Arroway. She’s using a CB radio to talk to people all over. Her father guides her in this process. We know they’re very close—her mother is dead, so it’s just the two of them. 

We cut to the future, where Dr. Ellie Arroway works for the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Her number-one hope is to find alien life. During her time there, she has a brief fling with a man named Palmer Joss. But she’s way more focused on her career to stick with him.  Going against her is David Drumlin, the president's science advisor. He pulls the funding from SETI, believing it’s a waste of money. Arroway gains financial backing from Hadden Industries, which is run by a reclusive billionaire. He allows her to continue the project at the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico.

Four more years into the future, Arroway discovers a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers sent from the star system Vega about 26 light-years away. Of course, this freaks everyone out. And Drumlin and the National Security Council, led by Michael Kitz, try to take over the facility. Hidden inside the signal is Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. While everyone gets very scared, Arroway and her team theorize that this would have been the first signal strong enough to leave Earth's ionosphere, reach all the way to Vega, and then be transmitted back. 

This doesn’t make the government feel secure, so they lock the project down. Arroway finds that the signal also contains more than 63,000 pages of indecipherable data as well. They’re instructions to build something. Our strange billionaire Hadden secretly meets with Arroway to provide the means to decode the pages to her. The pages reveal schematics for a complex machine that is determined to be some kind of transport for a single occupant to somewhere undefined. 

It’s there we again meet the now Christian philosopher Palmer Joss. He and Arroway are still very flirty. But his faith and her science keep them apart. Meanwhile, we get brief glimpses into Arroway’s past. We learn her father died tragically when she was nine years old and that she never knew her mother. This journey she’s on now is her constant search to know she’s not actually alone. 

The world becomes obsessed with the project and multiple nations chip in to fund the construction of the machine at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. In order to pick who goes into the contraption, an international panel is assembled to choose a candidate to travel in the machine. 

Although Arroway is a frontrunner to go, Palmer Joss is on the panel, and he brings attention to her atheism. The panel selects Drumlin as more representative of humanity—a crushing blow to Arroaway. But when the machine is first tested, a religious terrorist destroys the machine in a suicide bombing, killing Drumlin and several others. All is lost, and it looks like they’ll never be able to see what the machine the aliens sent would do. 

Billionaire Hadden is now in residence on the MIR space station. We learn that he is dying of cancer. He tells Arroway that the U.S. government had contracted with his company to secretly build another second machine in Japan. He’s asked that Arroway be the one to go and take the trip.  She’s flown to Japan and prepped for the journey. They send her with an array of recording devices. The machine begins to spin and fall. It is dropped into three rapidly spinning gimbaled rings, causing the pod to apparently travel through a series of wormholes. 

Arroway sees a radio array-like structure at Vega and signs of an advanced civilization on another distant planet. She then finds herself on a beach, similar to a childhood picture she drew of Pensacola, Florida. A figure approaches that becomes her deceased father. Arroway recognizes him as an alien taking her father's form and attempts to ask questions. The alien tells her that they are making her first contact easier for her and that this journey was just humanity's first step to joining other spacefaring species.

They tell her they’ll be in touch and then Arroway falls unconscious as she begins traveling back through a wormhole. When she wakes up, she’s on the floor of the pod, the mission control team repeatedly hailing her. She learns that the pod merely dropped through the machine's rings and landed in a safety net. For them, it only lasted seconds. But for her, it was hours. Her recording devices only captured static. 

There is a Congressional committee. They tell Arroway that they think the machine was a hoax designed by the now-deceased Hadden. But she’s certain it was not. Arroway asks the committee to accept the truth of her testimony on faith, as inspired by Palmer Joss, who sits in the audience. In a private conversation, Kitz and a White House official talk about unreleased confidential information that Arroway's recording device recorded static for 18 hours—proving she may have gone somewhere. 

Arroway and Joss reunite, and a future romance is promised. Arroway receives ongoing financial support at the VLA. And she awaits the next message from Vega. 

Is the movie Contact based on a true story?

This movie is not based on a true story, although a lot of people on the internet seem to be Googling this fact. It's based on a book by Carl Sagan, where he theorized what would happen if we received messages from another planet. 

How did Contact become a movie? 

Sagan was tossing this idea around in the 1970s. He pitches the idea to a movie producer friend, who told him to write the screenplay. Sagan wound up writing a movie treatment and then turning it into a book.

From there, the idea was purchased and developed, with Sagan then incorporating more modern science in the screenplay. The script was caught in turnaround, with many writers and directors taking a stab at the story. Eventually, Robert Zemeckis came onto the project. Warner Brothers gave him final cut and total artistic control. Sagan remained with the project as an advisor. 

The Contact movie wormhole

The wormhole in the movie was an addition Sagan added after reading a paper from theoretical physicist Kip Thorn .  Weta Digital was responsible for designing the  wormhole  sequence in the movie so that it felt realistic and fit with the rest of the authenticity of the rest of the film. 

The Contact movie ending

So let's talk about the ending of this movie. It's a real gut punch. You find Ellie basically on trial, with the whole world divided on whether or not they believe she traveled to Vega. Then we get the big reveal that her audio devices actually did record many hours of static, proving she went somewhere, even if we couldn't hear anything on the recording.

The movie also leaves Ellie Arroway back where she began, listening for that next message. This is all in direct contrast to how the book ended. 

The Contact book ending

At the end of the book , Ellie discovers that the silence recorded in her camera actually is filled with 1s and 0s. She works on it and decodes a new message. So even after being told she was crazy, she has tangible proof that she communicated with the aliens.

While we don't know what the next message says, Ellie is equipped with the knowledge that she's not crazy. 

The  Contact  book vs. movie ending analysis

I think the movie ending really pushes the themes of faith a little further than the book. The movie still shows Ellie Arroway as someone who believes in science, but her character arc lets her bend into having to have faith as well. While I love the idea that the message from Vega is delivered instantaneously, I do like the idea that Arroaway is left waiting at the end of the movie, putting her life back to the work she believes in.

For me, the movie takes us on a more complete emotional journey. Let's analyze that a little further. 

The Contact movie analysis

This is a movie about science versus faith. It puts them to the ultimate test and really digs into a low-key version of the alien narrative. We've seen other movies bring aliens to earth in a much noisier and high-concept way. This is super grounded, and at its heart it pushes the idea of what could actually happen if we made first contact. The movie also is not afraid to be a real character study of Ellie Arroway. 

Ellie is effectively a woman alone in the universe. She never met her mother, and her dad passed away when she was nine. She's been searching for a long time, talking to the stars, and looking for answers. Her answers come, and she's immediately met by skeptics. They hold her back because they refuse to believe in her experience, because she doesn't conform to their ideas, and because life is not fair. 

The Contact movie themes 

What sets this story apart for me is how deep the themes of the movie are and how much the filmmaking accentuates that. This movie could have been too heady or just full of science that might be interesting as facts, but not as entertainment. Instead, as we talked about earlier, the characters and arcs actually make this film stand out. 

Thematically, the ideas of science and faith run throughout the film. Certainly, the debate on the existence of God, strict adherence to facts, and the idea of finding indelible proof play huge roles. 

What makes this movie great? 

At the end of the day, what sets Contact above and beyond other movies is how much care and attention were put into every detail of its storytelling. Zemeckis' direction is fearless, and the cinematography in this movie is also excellent. We're constantly seeing a world stacked against the main character, who never folds, but often feels the walls closing in. While there are even some coincidences, everything plays into the idea that things happen, and we have to take information as it comes. 

But that's just my take—I want to know what you think in the comments. 

  • What Movies Does Jodie Foster Thinks Everyone Should Watch? ›

AI Says My Screenplay is Better Than 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'Schindler's List'

Who knew a computer could be so freaking stupid.

This morning, a really lovely NFS reader reached out to me and wanted my opinion on a program called ScriptReader.AI , which charges $10 for a complete screenplay breakdown, comparable to Greenlight Coverage , which we did a write-up on.

Upon glancing at the website, I thought it had some real big issues! First off, they have a vault of copyrighted screenplays, and it appears as if they ran through their language model to determine what is a good and what is a bad screenplay—but I have no proof of that, just wondering!

I would assume there's a lawsuit to be had somewhere in there, especially by some of the more litigious studios. They should look into it.

What I thought was hilarious was that the service was offering coverage for $10.

Yes, it took a few weeks for these AI coverage places to undercut each other to the point of costing as much as a large oatmilk latte at Alfred Coffee. When I saw that price point, I knew I had to try it.

Look, I get it, f*** these AI programs. I hate giving them money, but I think you may need to expose the scam by participating.

So, save your $10 and come with me on my journey.

I Wrote One Of The Greatest Screenplays of All Time

A few years ago, I sent my screenplay, Jafsie, out to three coverage services , and we rated them here. The script was favorably reviewed, and I have done a polish since then.

So I took it, uploaded it to the site, and paid my $10.

About two hours later, I got the full coverage report.

It even came with the AI generated poster that's above - complete with gibberish all over it.

Basically, the report goes through every scene in your screenplay and rates it on a scale from 1-10. And then it rates each scene on a ton of other elements as well.

It's kind of hard to fathom the breadth here without seeing it.

So check out the slideshow below.

The AI Coverage Report 

The inherent flaw of all ai coverage .

I write movies and TV because I want to make people feel something. I'm not sitting here typing to try to beat an algorithm.

I want the human being who reads my work to have a visceral reaction to what's on the page.

I am endlessly trying to write the best blueprint for a movie I possibly can.

Computers cannot think and feel. They have zero sense of nuance. And you cannot take their coverage seriously. No matter how nice it is.

AI coverage is worthless!

The way you feel about a movie or TV show is not quantifiable by math.

It's a complete and singular human reaction to art.

Pay for play sucks, and seeing how expensive some coverage services can be. It sucks to know people not in LA feel like that's their only way to enter the business.

The Best Way to Break In Is to Write a Great Screenplay and Network in LA

How to Break into Modern Hollywood

I'm a two-time Black List writer with a movie made, and another movie set to shoot this summer. I've written on TV, and sold pitches, and I can safely say none of this would have happened for me if I didn't make the leap of moving to Los Angeles.

Back in 2013 when I put my screenplay, Shovel Buddies , on The Black List, it was a new site, and my script scored high immediately -- a year later, I was on the actual Black List in Hollywood—a year after that, my script sold, and the following year we were in production on the movie.

But none of that forward momentum happened just because of the site; it happened because when the script got hot, I was in Los Angeles, working as an assistant, and had a Rolodex of friends who wanted to help me out.

Those friends would come in handy, because years later, when I had no reps a decade later, they were the ones who read my spec, Himbo , and passed it around, which got me back on the Black List and helped me continue my career with new reps, and also landed me more jobs.

At the end of the day, these paid sites are all trying to get you to pay something to get into Hollywood.

You can move here, get a job, and be paid to work and learn. I learned so much as an assistant. I made friends with future presidents of companies, big directors, and even agents. Those have been way more valuable in the long run than just paying for a read or notes.

I also got to hear real pros pitch, see how they talked to my bosses, and even make friends and get first-hand advice from them.

Sure, paying for the Black List opened the door, but the act of sustaining the ability to write for a living has come via working with friends, and with the support of people I met out here who believe in me. And I truly am not sure that if I had no friends out here, my hot BL script in 2013 may not have been passed around as much as it was - because I know for a fact, friends passed it up the ladder because they saw my name on it and because we had been in the trenches together.

I am well aware not everyone can move here, but if you're weighing the options, coming here and getting a job is a way better way to attempt to break in than just throwing money at contests.

The first thing I did after writing this article was delete my script from that AI website. I hope that removes it from any sort or large langue model training. Or protects me from having the idea plagiarized by a computer.

But maybe it doesn't.

If you have to pay for coverage, save up and pay a human.

Unless you are trying to get into this business to entertain robots.

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1997, Sci-fi, 2h 30m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Contact elucidates stirring scientific concepts and theological inquiry at the expense of satisfying storytelling, making for a brainy blockbuster that engages with its ideas, if not its characters. Read critic reviews

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Contact videos, contact   photos.

In this Zemeckis-directed adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) races to interpret a possible message originating from the Vega star system. Once first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence is proven, Arroway contends with restrictive National Security Advisor Kitz (James Woods) and religious fanatics bent on containing the implications of such an event. An incredible message is found hidden in the signal, but will Arroway be the one to answer its call?

Genre: Sci-fi

Original Language: English

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Producer: Steve Starkey , Robert Zemeckis

Writer: Carl Sagan , James V. Hart , Michael Goldenberg

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 11, 1997  original

Release Date (Streaming): May 1, 2008

Box Office (Gross USA): $100.9M

Runtime: 2h 30m

Distributor: Warner Home Vídeo

Production Co: Warner Brothers

Sound Mix: SDDS, DTS, Surround, Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: 35mm, Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Jodie Foster

Eleanor Ann 'Ellie' Arroway

Matthew McConaughey

Palmer Joss

James Woods

Michael Kitz

S.R. Hadden

Tom Skerritt

David Drumlin

William Fichtner

David Morse

Ted Arroway

Angela Bassett

Rachel Constantine

Geoffrey Blake

Max Martini

Richard Rank

Jena Malone

Young Ellie

Tucker Smallwood

Mission Director

Robert Zemeckis

James V. Hart

Michael Goldenberg

Joan Bradshaw

Executive Producer

Steve Starkey

Alan Silvestri

Original Music

Don Burgess

Cinematographer

Arthur Schmidt

Film Editing

Victoria Burrows

Ed Verreaux

Production Design

Bruce Crone

Art Director

Lawrence A. Hubbs

Michael Taylor

Set Decoration

Joanna Johnston

Costume Design

News & Interviews for Contact

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Potter 5 Claims a Release Date

Critic Reviews for Contact

Audience reviews for contact.

With all the fun popcorn sci-fi movies we get each year, I think people forget how interesting and cerebral science-fiction can be. Contact is an ambitious look at the lengths of our universe and our human reach, but it sometimes gets a little too obsessed with itself to make a great watch. Directed by the great Robert Zemeckis and stars Oscar winning Jodie Foster as Dr. Arroway, a scientist who first discovers a potential connection to a life form from an unidentifiable place. Contact is mostly a film about a young girl devoting her life to the research and passion of her late father, but it deals with some heavy themes and ideas. Some ideas are perhaps way to grand scale and broad for the film's grasp, but at its core I really dug the bond between a father and his daughter here. David Morse plays her father in a limited role, but his presence is felt throughout the film. Jodie Foster's performance as Dr. Arroway is also a highlight. As much as it appears this is an ensemble piece with established actors, this film is largely on her shoulders, and she always kept me engaged. Unfortunately, her character is given a love interest in Matthew McConaughey's character, Palmer Joss. It's one thing to have a one-note character as a love interest. But it's even worse to have that very character ONLY be used when the plot feels like it needs the audience to be more invested in an "emotional moment". The Joss character is merely a plot device and is a hindrance on the enjoyment of Contact as a whole. But Joss wasn't the only highly flawed character. As Arroway gets closer to analyzing the 'aliens' message to the humans, a character named S.R. Hadden secretly meets with Arroway. This scene, along with every scene he appears in, is completely tonally out of place. This is Contact's biggest issue. The film's first half is tonally balanced and grounded in realism (at least for sci-fi), but once Hadden enters the picture it feels much more heightened than it does grounded. His character seems like a villain straight out of a Bond film, and that just didn't fit in with the rest of the story. I like what this film challenges us to think about and explore. And to its credit, the third act's payoff is truly unlike anything I have seen before, so there's no shortage of originality there. But to me, the writing with a few characters and unbalanced tone is what really killed my enjoyment after awhile. +Foster +Harrowing journey full of intriguing reveals -But the tone is all over the place -As are the writing for certain characters 6.6/10

jodie foster space travel

Robert Zemeckis crafts a very good science fiction drama, but in many ways it does lack a bit. The sheer scope of the film is grand, its ideas are very good, interesting and captivating, but there are times that the film feels a bit underdeveloped and it could have stood out more due to the fact that it has some very good ideas and acting on display on-screen. Watching the film, I felt that at times, it felt a bit too preachy, and it could have toned down a bit, but as a whole, Contact is an engaging picture, one that boasts impressive performances and a good story. However, I felt that the film considering what it deals with should have been much better as well. This isn't a bad film by any means, but it does leave a bit to be desired in terms of its story. The problem is that it tries to be far too ambitious, and it leaves a few things to dwindle and it never comes to fruition, which is a great shame because Contact really could have been a remarkable and highly memorable Science Fiction drama that could have stood out among other genre films. Contact is a good film, but it's not one Zemeckis' best efforts. For what it is, it's entertaining film, but at times we can see that the story strains a bit and it tries to overshadow the sometimes lacking plot with far too ambitious ideas, which like I said never really comes to light, and it's a shame because Contact had all the ingredients of a great Science Fiction picture, but it could have been so much better as well.

Fascinating story about first alien contact. Brilliant story telling in which complex ideas are communicated simply enough to be understood by a non-technogeek audience. (I could have done with a little less religious grandstanding though.)

Clearly, this is Robert Zemeckis trying to make up for not being able to adapt that space travel bit from the original novel when he did his then-previous film, "Forrest Gump". Yeah, I know I sound like I'm looking too far into it, but now-a-days, Matthew McConaughey can't seem to escape being typecast as country doofus... I said, even though he's playing a genius in this film. Okay, maybe I am looking too far into it (Yeah, I can't believe it either), not just because Tom Hanks is certainly no Matthew McConaughey, but because if Bob Zemeckis wanted some good old fashion Southern accent, then he couldn't have gotten it any more off if was going for Jodie Foster. It had cannibals, a sex-change operation hopeful skinning people and a cop being strung up by his guts to look like an angels, yet nothing in "The Silence of the Lambs" was more horrifying than Jodie Foster's Southern accent. Hey, bad accent or not, she still knows what she's doing in every other department of acting, much like James Woods, who is such a great actor that he appears to have gone full method and launched himself into space, which would explain where he's been the last couple of years. Well, he was either doing that, or watching this film, seeing as this movie takes a couple of years to finish. No, it's not that long, but if you're thinking that Zemeckis is going to take a break from slowness for this two-and-a-half hour "discussion" on aliens, then you must be somewhere in space, because you're clearly not getting a whole lot of oxygen in your brain. Okay, in all fairness, the '90s was around the time Zemeckis experimented with slowing down on the slowing down, so this is quite less slow than some of his early work, which is to be expected seeing as his early work consisted of wacky comedies and adventure films, which are, of course, typically immensely less exciting than the aforementioned two-and-a-half hours of scientic mumbo jumo. No, but seriously though, Zemeckis does a fabulous job of pumping these two-and-a-half hours of mostly dialogue full of material and intrigue, as I'll get into later, yet when he's not heavily playing up the atmosphere or blasting moments of insanely over-the-top sound design into your skull, the film goes a bit limp. It's not terribly slow or quiet during those moments, yet those moments remain active nevertheless and really dry up a film already damaged pretty heavily by pacelessness. The runtime of the film is not tediously paced, though it is palpable, and while you're not too likely to fall out of the film too much, you are bound to check your watch on more than one occasion. It's a dialogue-driven, two-and-a-half hour long intellectual study, so it's to be expected that this film will fall into slowness, no matter how many golden moments it has. Of course, then again, this film has a lot of golden moments, which isn't to say that it's a consistent knockout, but it is to say that it's still with plenty of moments where intrigue blends with entertainment and really wakes you up. Of course, what is consistent about this film is Zemeckis' genius ability to keep you going even when the film is at its lowest, because although not all of his films can be "Forrest Gump", he is a phenomenal director. Strap in boys and girls, because I'm about to hit the nail so hard on the head that you can't believe no one has come up with this, because it's just so fitting: ...The sci-fi version of "JFK". Actually, come to think of it, I don't know if I hit the nail on the head that hard, because although this is also a lengthy, fascinating, highly intellegent and slickly-stylized study on, well, to be frank, some bull that never happened, this film is much tighter and much less repetitive. Don't get me wrong, "JFK" was pretty rock solid and even better than this film is a fair deal of aspects, yet when it comes to fulfilling the promises of a compellingly provocative and perfectly probable in as comfortable of a manner as possible, look no further than Mr. Robert Zemeckis, who further proves himself to among today's great directors with his highly impressive ability to pump this film with so much intrigue and information, while staging the presentation of these aspects in a highly unconventional fashion. Sure, for every convention the film transcends, it falls into a cliche, yet there is not one cliche that is not heavily outweighed by the uniqueness of the film, and for that, credit is due, not only to Zemeckis' storytelling, but to his style, because although he'll touch your mind and sometimes even your hearts, he always does it in style. His style is not off-the-walls like we, or at least I usually like it to be, yet when things do get intense, he appeals to the style fan in us all with clever manipulation of cinematography, as well as atmosphere, and when the snappy editor, the fabulous visual effects team, the great score composer Alan Silvesrti and - woah boy - those crazy sound designers all get a hold of what Zemeckis crafted when the cameras were rolling, they add the final touches and ultimately produce tighty, powerfully-stylish moments of punch-up to break up the slowness and keep the film lively. Whether it be the always skilled Robert Zemeckis or the charming members of the colorful cast - headed by a fabulous Jodie Foster -, there are plenty of people giving this film a touch of style and life that make it both provocatively intellegent and tighter more often than not. Okay, now, let me slow down, because the film is not as excellent as I'm making it sound, yet it is still pretty darn good, boasting a slick mixture of style and substance that produces enough juice to get this puppy to its point in a fashion that's more often than not graceful. When it's all said, sent back in mathematic code waves by a alien race and done, this film descends into slowness quite often, yet is constantly without pace, but what keeps it pumping along with very little steam-loss is the charming, colorful cast - led by an deeply compelling and, at times, deeply emotional - and, most of all, Robert Zemeckis, who blends dazzlingly golden moments of pure entertainment, style and even emotion with pure, thought-provoking intrigue - supplemented by highly educated and highly buyable writing all but seamlessly - to make "Contact" an ultimately often spotty, yet thoroughly rewarding sci-fi experience that will leave you with plenty to think about, and not just when it comes to what the film is discussing, but when it comes to the film's overall quality. 3/5 - Good

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Like Jodie Foster's hopeful space voyager in the picture, "Contact" may not travel quite as far as it hopes to go, but the trip is worth taking nonetheless. More down-to-earth and "realistic" in its concerns than most other Hollywood movies about an encounter with an alien intelligence, Robert Zemeckis' first film since the globe-conquering "Forrest Gump" places at least as much emphasis on science as on fiction, and proves quite an engrossing ride most of the way. More cerebral and less suspense or action-oriented than the general run of big-budget summer pics, this Warner Bros. release looks to find solid mainstream audience acceptance cued by good reviews and upbeat word of mouth. Based upon the 1985 bestseller by Carl Sagan and developed with the futurist's active involvement until his death in December, the film explores a plausible case study for how contemporary society might react to the detection of verifiable signals from another world. Taken up in this context are the conflicts, and potential common ground, between scientific and religious points of view, the opposition of private enterprise vs. government interests, and the more common question of what to expect from extraterrestrials and how the world might be changed by knowledge of them.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

  • Remember Me 14 years ago
  • Shutter Island 14 years ago
  • Green Zone 14 years ago

In other words, “Contact” is a serious and sober piece of speculative fiction, designed to play off of apprehensions about the forthcoming millennium in a positive and uplifting manner. Beautifully crafted and legitimately involving once it locks onto a dramatic track, film benefits from remaining mysterious about how far it intends to go in pursuing its themes, but also suffers from long-windedness and preachy final-reel explicitness as to its message.

Central focus of James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg’s smart but somewhat lumpy scenario is Dr. Ellie Arroway (Foster), a brilliant, devoted scientist who has passed up other opportunities to spend her time listening for possible messages from deep space over radio telescope dishes. Repeated flashbacks to her youth establish her precocious intelligence and close relationship with her father, whose death when she was nine heightened her sense of isolation (her mother died in childbirth) and eliminated any possibility for religious belief.

At the outset, Arroway has government backing for her listening post in Puerto Rico pulled out from under her by erstwhile sponsor and presidential science adviser David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), although not before she has had a brief fling with handsome lapsed seminarian Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey).

Set up again with private backing from a mysterious benefactor, Arroway and her small staff are still listening away in New Mexico four years later when they tune in on a signal that sounds eerily like a giant striding heavily across the land. The broadcast, emanating from the star Vega, also contains harmonics and is sent in patterns consisting only of prime numbers; a visual component is discovered to be, of all things, an image of Adolf Hitler inaugurating the 1936 Olympic Games.

No one could possibly know right off what to make of all this, but the president and his men, represented by mean-spirited national security adviser Michael Kitz (James Woods), want immediate answers, as do the religious fundamentalists who fear any suspected meddling in the holy status quo. Whoever is delivering its messages via the airwaves has also sent elaborate digital data which, after its hieroglyphics have been decoded , proves to be a diagram for constructing a space capsule and launching pad that will supposedly enable earthlings to reach Vega at the speed of light.

With astonishing speed and efficiency, the government finances the building of the enormous launch facility, which resembles an elaborate theme park installation with wondrous moving parts. Arroway, who had hoped to be selected to make the 50-year round trip to Vega (the space traveler would only age four years, however), gets aced out by her superior, Drumlin. But a weird catastrophe winds up giving the young woman another chance at the trip, with results that emphasize the astonishment of the universe and the possibility of a convergence between science and religious faith.

Sparked at all times by the scientist’s probing, inquisitive, quick-thinking personality, the film is filled, first and foremost, by investigative activity. Making stimulating what must certainly, in reality, be boring data-gathering and analysis, the film rolls right over any number of implausibilities and gaps in logic in pursuit of its grander themes, which seems fine while the story is unspooling since the overall tenor of the proceedings is far more intelligent than is the norm in movies these days.

Nonetheless, there are irritants. All those who would question or oppose the heroine are made to look venally right-wing or religiously far-out. It’s funny the first time when President Clinton is made to seem to interact with, or comment upon, the fictional characters and situations, but this “Forrest Gump”-like gag is seriously overworked here. And McConaughey’s role of a presidential spiritual adviser whose attraction for Arroway persists over the years comes off like a middleweight part unnaturally pumped up to heavyweight status in a misguided attempt to create a male lead; the film’s one ridiculous scene has him turning up on remote Hokkaido Island on the eve of Arroway’s top-secret mission to state his feelings for her.

On the other hand, there are plenty of captivating moments. The array of huge radio telescopes is sometimes photographed to resemble modern versions of the Easter Island statues; the visual enhancement of a grainy image into a shot of Hitler is creepily unexpected; the sight of Arroway in her armor-like space suit marching toward her bizarre craft summons up unearthly echoes of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” while her “trip” represents a distinctly modern, and technically advanced, version of the heady stargate sequence in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Once Arroway reaches her “destination,” the film, while reaching a peak of ineffable physical beauty, falls into a slight lull, only to bog down further during an extended congressional hearing in which the scientist takes the stand to extol humankind’s virtues and stress her faith that we are not alone in the universe.

When “Contact” is at its best, notably during its strong middle third, it is very good indeed, but it is not as sharp or incisive as it might have been in summarizing its concerns in nonverbal ways; for example, the visual “trip” contains far too much distracting commentary from its passenger.

But the picture’s style and technical quality are consistently outstanding. Zemeckis’ directorial hand is ultra-smooth and reassuring, and his time-tested confidence in combining live action with special effects pays off yet again in a virtually seamless presentation of fantastic events against a background of heightened contemporary reality. Don Burgess’ cinematography is particularly noteworthy, and the astute contributions of production designer Ed Verreaux and the many special effects experts play major roles in putting the story across.

Front and center throughout, Foster is excellent, very credible in her projection of innate intelligence, dedication to career and banishment of any personal life. Among the largely one-dimensional supporting cast, John Hurt is good fun as the impossibly wealthy and eccentric financier of Arroway’s project, a man who prefers to see out his days on the Mir space station than to continue to inhabit the Earth.

  • Production: A Warner Bros. release of a South Side Amusement Co. production. Produced by Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey. Executive producers, Joan Bradshaw, Lynda Obst. Co-producers, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay, James V. Hart, Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by Carl Sagan and the story by Sagan, Ann Druyan
  • Crew: Camera (Technicolor, Panavision widescreen), Don Burgess; editor, Arthur Schmidt; music, Alan Silvestri; production design, Ed Verreaux; art direction, Lawrence A. Hubbs, Bruce Crone; set design, James Claytor, Josh Lusby, Kristen Pratt, Evelyne Barbier, Easton M. Smith, Dean Wolcott, Mariko Braswell; set decoration, Michael J. Taylor; costume design, Joanna Johnston; sound (Dolby digital/DTS/SDDS), William B. Kaplan; senior visual effects supervisor, Ken Ralston; video graphics supervisor, Ian Kelly; special effects, Sony Pictures Imageworks; additional special visual effects, Industrial Light & Magic, Weta Ltd., Warner Digital, Cis Hollywood, Pacific Ocean Post, Big Sky Post; associate producers, Rick Porras, Steven J. Boyd; assistant director, Bruce Moriarity; second unit director, Steve Starkey; second unit camera, Josh Bleibtreu; casting, Victoria Burrows. Reviewed at the Village Theater, L.A., July 1, 1997. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 150 min.
  • With: Ellie Arroway.....Jodie Foster Palmer Joss.....Matthew McConaughey Michael Kitz.....James Woods S.R. Hadden.....John Hurt David Drumlin.....Tom Skerritt Kent.....William Fichtner Ted Arroway.....David Morse Rachel Constantine.....Angela Bassett Fisher.....Geoffrey Blake Willie.....Maximillian Martini Richard Rank.....Rob Lowe Joseph.....Jake Busey Young Ellie.....Jena Malone Mission Director.....Tucker Smallwood

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Arrival: The film's phony good intentions, and paradox of 'realistic' sci-fi

Entertainment Geekly: On shallow Deep Thoughts and godless Space-Gods.

Darren is a TV Critic. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFranich for opinions and recommendations.

jodie foster space travel

NOTE: The following contains spoilers for Arrival , a movie many fine people love for some reason.

There have been many dumb movies made in our dumb century. Impressive, maybe, how Arrival waits over an hour before it actively starts insulting your intelligence. Helpful, too, that the movie stars good actors as smart people. Amy Adams is Louise Banks, a linguist; Jeremy Renner is Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist. They are friendly and they are competitive, like university professors at a faculty-only boozy brunch. At one point, Donnelly tells Banks, “You approach language like a mathematician.” In Arrival , a grayscale movie set in a frownverse of chilly professionals with furrowed brows, that counts as a love sonnet.

Banks and Donnelly try to talk to each other. Mostly, they try to talk to aliens. It’s in all the trailers: A big shapeless spacecraft, a geometric oxygenated alien-cave, hazily-visualized tentacular squidsects who sound like whales humming Hans Zimmer. This isn’t the kind of sci-fi movie with funny sci-fi nomenclature or florid sci-fi worldbuilding: The aliens are called “Heptapods.” The reason to see Arrival is to see Adams struggle towards communication with these seven-legged creatures. Her mission: To establish a common tongue with beings who have no tongue. (Or, maybe they have too many tongues; or, they’re giant tongues and their taste buds are vocal cords.)

Banks is afraid of the aliens, and delighted by them, intellectually stimulated and frustrated. It’s a fine performance by Adams, who has to carry a lot of weight. The aliens don’t look all that convincing. They’re so shrouded in distance fog , an understandable cost-cutting measure that nevertheless just feels like a cost-cutting measure. But Adams makes you believe in them — or anyhow, you believe she believes in them.

The Heptapods have a written language. Well, “written.” They spray ink-fog from a tentacle phallus to form cryptograms in mid-air. The best part of Arrival is the smartest and least trailer-y; Banks learns the alien written language, explains their circular sentence structure, muses about how it feels to think in a foreign language.

The plot problem is that language — spoken, written, whatever — is ambiguous. At one point, the squid-things declare: “There is no time.” Is that a warning — or a philosophy? Are these aliens a warrior race, or just hardcore fans of McConaughey from True Detective ? (Their writing, you will notice, is flat circles.)

Arrival comes on strong like an intimate cerebral character piece. But it isn’t not Independence Day -ish. Confused and scared about the aliens’ intentions, the world flips out. The back half of Arrival is a ticking clock, maybe to Armageddon. There are familiar tropes: Clips from fake news networks, paper-thin military types going rogue for paper-thin reasons. There is “The Unspoken Military Might of China” as a co-lead.

The world descends into chaos, and Banks stares at a chalkboard. The fate of the world depends on Amy Adams thinking hard: So Arrival qualifies as “cerebral,” on the sliding scale of popular Hollywood sci-fi. 2016, we can’t forget, was the year of Batman v Superman , a movie where the fate of the world depends on Amy Adams grabbing a spear out of the water after she threw that spear into the water. Compared to kindergarten, fifth grade is college.

( ASIDE: You could could argue that Arrival doesn’t explicitly state Banks is “saving the world.” She is specifically preventing China from attacking the aliens; given the Heptapods’ zen attitude toward the space-time continuum, it’s possible they would have responded to any attack with peaceful acceptance. So maybe Banks is just saving the extraterrestrials. But the movie surely presents Banks’ final-act heroism as world- altering ; when we see her talking to the Chinese General in the future, it’s clear that the world has adjusted peacewards from the chaos that dominates the movie. And it’s more or less explicitly stated that the Heptapods are saving humanity so humanity can save the Heptapods, which means by the transitive property Banks is actually saving two worlds . END OF ASIDE .)

There’s a phony core to Arrival , though, which emerges gradually and then suddenly. The film opens with the birth, life, and death of Banks’ daughter. The devastation of her loss haunts the film; mother-daughter scenes play through the movie. It seems like a character note, a clever bit of arc-setting: Banks, grieving the loss of her child, must now midwife our communication with an entirely new species. Perhaps you would say: Having cut herself off from humanity, she must now connect humanity to the stars. Or maybe not everything is plot-essential; maybe this is a movie daring enough to suggest that the characters have a life outside of the constraints of the movie.

But Arrival , turns out, is entirely a Plot Movie. Every character trait and hanging line of dialogue is hermetically sealed into the architecture of what amounts to a Big Twist. As Banks learns the aliens’ language, her consciousness comes unstuck in time. The daughter we’ve been seeing hasn’t even been born yet.

There’s an angle where this could be wild and interesting. But the film loses its ambition. Having established that Banks’ consciousness has broken through the usual flow of time-space, Arrival deploys her ascendance as a plot weapon. To stop China from launching an attack, Banks’ consciousness time-hops forward 18 months, where a helpful Chinese general tells her how she saved the world that one time. Actually, the way Banks saves the world is by calling the Chinese general and reminding him of his dead wife. Maybe you think that’s emotional; worth pointing out, maybe, that in Batman v Superman , the world gets saved because one guy says something that reminds another guy of his dead mom.

The dialogue goes downhill, too. In one of the flashforwards, Banks mentions that her daughter’s unseen father is a scientist. Actually, what Banks says in that scene is: “You want science? Call your father!” It’s one of the year’s worst lines, one of those load-bearing plot-hinge declaratives that only makes sense as a narrative breadcrumb. Hmmm, are there any scientists in this movie? Perhaps any handsome scientists played by the second-billed performer? Perhaps pretty much the only other human we see Amy Adams interact with ? The Adams-Renner romance would maybe work, if the film had time for flirtation, if the performers were allowed to have chemistry. But Arrival isn’t really a “chemistry” kind of movie, nor really a “performer” kind of movie. Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg — two of our finest — spend the movie staring at screens, auditioning for the role of Bad Guy In a Bourne movie.

And the narrative trickery obscures a bigger problem. When you dig underneath all the pop-science whiteboarding and mystery-theater theorizing and globalist paranoia, Arrival as a text is pretty sentimental, simple, inoffensive, and bland. It comes on like thoughtful sci-fi, but the thoughts aren’t challenging, the science fuzzy, the fiction unconvincing. Communication is difficult, Arrival tells us, but not impossible. All ambiguities can become certainties. The aliens are here to help us; we can learn how to help each other. Here’s a film that perches the world on the edge of Armageddon, and concludes that, in order to save the world, we really need to be excellent to each other.

“Agreed!” you might say, and “So what?” I guess you could credit Arrival for good intentions, and maybe it’s churlish given the times we live in to deplore a movie for sentimentally believing that all the problems of the world can be solved with a healthy conversation. The Renner Romance and the Cute Daughter = happy feels and sad feels. Never mind that the romance is nonexistent, that the Cute Daughter has all the personality of the cute daughter from a smartphone commercial scored to Sigur Ros.

But it’s frustrating, how completely Arrival stacks its own deck. And how it mixes together its listless ideas. What had been a movie about the difficulty of communication becomes, suddenly, a film about accepting loss, or maybe the struggle from loneliness toward the possibility of loss. As the film ends, Banks ponders: Will she live out her life, knowing how it ends, knowing the unhappiness awaiting her? Can she appreciate every moment, the good and the bad? I dunno, what do you think? Arrival comes on like thoughtful science fiction, but it’s more like a religious fable, doing all the thinking and the feeling for you. “Are you Pro-Goodness or anti-Cute Daughter?” is the question of the movie. There is no third option.

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“We never did learn why the Heptapods left,” says Banks, “Any more than we learned what brought them here, or why they acted the way they did.”

That is decidedly not a line in Arrival , a movie which climaxes with a Heptapod explaining — in the year’s most unintentionally funny subtitle — why they are here, and what they need humanity to do.

No, that line comes from “Story of Your Life,” the smart and unplotty short story by Ted Chiang. Arrival is based on that story — loosely, but maybe you think the changes were necessary. “Story of Your Life” doesn’t have any military-threat subplot, no race-against-the-Armageddon-clock final act. Actually, Chiang’s story doesn’t really do twists; it skips timelines, but at no point does anyone leap forward a couple years so Banks can talk to a Deus Ex Machina . And the movie, to be clear, literally has a ticking clock: A bomb set by the rogue soldiers, which leads to an offscreen shootout and an onscreen explosion. The story has no shootout, no explosion, no rogue soldiers. It does have a conversation about Fermat’s Principle, and at one point the narrator uses the phrase “a Borgesian fabulation.”

Maybe you think all the end-of-the-world stuff isn’t what Arrival is really about; that’s all just background, the macro B-plot to Banks’ micro A-plot. Someone on Twitter told me the aliens are just a metaphor, and the movie is about loneliness. But that argument has no merit, I think, since Arrival is in not a movie about a lonely woman achieving connection; it is a movie about a lonely woman achieving connection WHILE SHE IS SAVING THE WORLD . Sometimes, the medium is the message.

Arrival belongs to a subgenre of science fiction cinema that doesn’t really have a proper name. You know it when you see it. Some heads prefer the term “Hard Science Fiction,” but that sounds too egotistical and too judgmental. It commingles seriousness with toughness, implying that anything else is somehow too soft.

In the past, I’ve used the phrase “Realistic Science Fiction,” but that’s not quite right either; if the story was realistic, then by definition it couldn’t be science fiction. (Perhaps “Real ish tic”?) “Realism” as an aesthetic term is unhelpful now, vague enough that it can apply to anything. Actually, “realism” is now most often used as a paradoxical modifier, appended to things that are base-level unrealistic. (No director of a superhero film will ever say: “I wanted this movie to feel as unrealistic as possible.”)

By way of contrast to, like, Transformers 3 , you could say that Arrival represents Deep-Thought Science Fiction. But I’m not sure Arrival actually has any deep thoughts. Perhaps you’ve never imagined the possibility of human consciousness living in multiple time periods; you should read Slaughterhouse-Five , watch the middle seasons of Lost , just get more in tune with your universe, man.

The simplest way of framing the subgenre is Science Fiction Without Rayguns: A cinema of far-out concepts and human concerns, deploring cheap thrills or phaser-laser setpieces. There are no swashbucklers, no spacefights, no alien princesses, no aliens human-looking enough to be sexy. (You can have fun getting pedantic: Alien counts, probably, but not Aliens ; Deep Impact definitely counts, but not Armageddon .) In these films, basic rules of science are obeyed: It takes forever to get anywhere, and in space no one can hear anything.

If that sounds like fun: Congratulations, you’re the moviegoer Hollywood can’t afford to believe in. Making Science Fiction Without Rayguns generally demands a big budget and generally promises no easy thrills. People barely want to see science fiction movies as it is. Fantasy has always been more popular at the box office — especially depending on which bucket you toss Star Wars into. (It has spaceships, but also swordfights; it has rayguns, but also wizards.)

Some films in this genre get around the “budget” thing with a lo-fi aesthetic. The brilliant time travel potboiler Primer was shot for lunch money in houses and public spaces. The clever Ex Machina won an Oscar for its digital effects, but it’s cheaper to build a robot woman when she spends the movie talking in one room. But spaceships are a problem you can’t fake with clever lighting. Arrival cost a reported $47 million and seems to have 17 production companies, and the film still has to deal with people saying things like “the aliens don’t look all that convincing.”

2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t cheap — somewhere around $11 or $12 million in 1968, much more expensive than Arrival now — and in some ways it belongs in a class by itself, a weird head-trip big-budget spectacle with no real protagonists. Yet 2001 is generally accepted as the pinnacle of the real-ish science fiction genre.

You either think 2001 is a perfect movie or you think it’s totally boring. I lean the former, and I cried when I saw it last year on the big screen for the first time. But I understand the latter perspective, too. 2001 features a bare minimum of exposition, most of it inscrutable. The actors barely form facial expressions. There’s a five-minute scene where a guy runs and runs and runs. It’s never made explicitly clear why anything is happening, ever.

Which, to be clear: It’s all incredible, incredible, incredible. It’s hard to imagine anyone making 2001 today, because it’s hard to imagine how anyone ever made 2001 . The film introduces a charming talking computer and sends that computer on a quietly murderous rampage. It concludes with the sole survivor — a character you barely know, with arguably no real character traits beyond “human-ness” — aiming his ship straight into a wormhole. And although all Kubrick’s films have a chilly reputation, it’s not hard to argue that 2001 is one of the most optimistic movies ever made: If you think humanity will last long enough to evolve into a higher state of being, you probably don’t watch the news anymore.

In the thick of the first run of Star Trek , nine years before Star Wars , 2001 inaugurated a new kind of science fiction cinema. Some people prefer the artier Solaris or the funkier Cool Silent Running , and you can just as easily draw a line from 2001 to Steven Spielberg’s populist Close Encounters of the Third Kind , maybe the single most beloved movie ever made about a man ditching his family to pursue his dreams.

Arrival certainly has a lot in common with Close Encounters . Spielberg’s film ends with scientists at a base camp trying to communicate with extraterrestrials in a floating ship. That’s where Arrival begins, middles, and ends, what with time being such a flat circle.

But actually, Arrival more closely resembles Contact , a film about Jodie Foster wearing headphones and listening to those headphones and then listening really hard to those headphones.

Contact was a sensation in 1997 when it was just a trailer — it’s one of the best previews of the ’90s — and it’s been pretty well forgotten these past two decades. Easy to understand why: Sold as a thrilling cosmic tale of first contact with an alien species, it’s arguably best understood as a portrait of the bureaucratic response to the possibility of first contact with aliens. Foster plays Dr. Ellie Arroway, and she spends the first part of the movie fighting, tooth and nail, for funding . Then, she fights sketchy government types (including James Woods, at Peak Sketchy Government Type Nixon ). And then she has to audition for the chance to travel through space — to fulfill her whole life’s work! — in front of a UN-ish panel, televised around the world.

At this point, Arroway has established herself: As a scientist, as a devoted hard worker, as someone who is committed her whole life to the possibility of humanity’s cosmic endeavor. And this scientist is asked, in full view of the world, “Do you believe in God?” (The man asking her is a Christian pop-philosopher who she slept with years ago, played by Matthew McConaughey, but that’s not important.)

Arroway tells the truth. “As a scientist, I rely on empirical evidence,” she explains. “I don’t believe there is data either way.” The whole panel visibly sags. Doesn’t 95 percent of the human race believe in a Supreme Being? Shouldn’t any representative of that race believe that, too? Foster refuses to pander.

Then Tom Skerritt takes the stand, for his own audition. He’s one of Foster’s rivals, a government-lifer company man who refused to fund Foster’s work when it seemed pointless, and is now grabbing all her credit now that her work has paid off. His character is named David Drumlin, and I think he’s one of the great underrated antagonists of the ’90s. Drumlin talks about “all that God has blessed us with,” and he worries about what will happen if “we chose to send a representative who did not put our most cherished beliefs first.”

The panel selects Drumlin. McConaughey’s avatar-of-Christianity, full of despondent self-righteousness, tries to convince Arroway that, darn it, he just had to vote with his conscience. “I just couldn’t, in good conscience,” he tells her, “vote for a person who doesn’t believe in God.”

Arroway is disgusted — maybe partially with the idea of a man of faith passing judgment on a woman of science, but mostly offended that the panel responded so well to an obvious con. “I told the truth up there,” says Arroway. “Drumlin told you exactly what you wanted to hear.”

A woman tells the world hard truths, and is punished for her honesty. A man tells the world what they want to hear, and is rewarded for his opportunism. Like the best Science Fiction Without Rayguns, Contact has far outlived its original context. Like Arrival , it does get fuzzier as it goes along. Arroway achieves her own dead-relative transcendence. You could argue, in broad strokes, that Contact ‘s message is Arrival ‘s message: Connection Is Important, or Reach Beyond Thyself. (Quoth the alien: “The only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable [is] each other.”)

But Contact earns that optimism. Scientific endeavor, the movie argues, is difficult: endless research, embarrassing ass-out funding pleas, the very good possibility that all your work will be taken away from you by some dude who doesn’t believe in science and doesn’t know “science” isn’t something you believe in. “Small moves,” the alien tells Jodie Foster. Contact is an argument against grand gestures. It’s a passionate ode to, of all things, incrementalism.

Foster came back to science fiction in 2013’s Elysium , a movie that boldly argues that there are rich people and there are poor people, and that’s uncool, man. Having established a tone of bare social realism, the film immediately becomes an eerie fable of Privilege Bestowed: Matt Damon plays a white messiah to a working-class trashworld seemingly populated exclusively by Hispanics. The film solves wealth disparity using advanced medical technology. It’s the least thoughtful sort of science fiction: Having addressed a real problem, Elysium invents an impossible solution.

The film was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who has since admitted that the story wasn’t quite all there. Blomkamp had a reputation as a sci-fi thinker after District 9 , but he’s never been as pretentious as his partisans. He likes action scenes, and he likes space guns. Elysium is, in that sense, a fairly standard contemporary blockbuster action film. It suffers from our modern story gravity: The world is at stake.

That’s true of Arrival , too, and I don’t think it should be overlooked. I know some people view Arrival as a deeply personal story — but that personal story is unquestionably political, and every move Adams makes is sanctified with moral goodness.

In 2001 , the fate of the world wasn’t at stake. Actually, in that sense, contemporary semi-serious sci-fi is much closer in spirit to the film 2010 , an oddly endearing bad sequel which tries hard to crush everything interesting about 2001 with retroactive coherence. 2010 explains, in numbing detail, why HAL went crazy — it wasn’t his fault, and the once-mad computer nobly sacrifices itself to save humanity. Literally, all humanity: By the end of 2010 , the U.S. and the USSR are at a state of high tension, and the threat of nuclear war looms large. The monoliths, previously an unknowable outside force, reveal themselves as helpful parental figures. They transform Jupiter into a star, which makes the moon Europa into a new vibrant planet. Back home on Earth, the Americans and the Soviets see two suns in the sky – and declare general peace.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book 2010 in 1982. The book is more austere, clinical, less dramatic, and better. It ends with a message from the monoliths, via HAL, to humanity:

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA.

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

It’s in the film of 2010 that the big world-saving stakes come to the forefront. And the film updates that final message, too:

USE THEM TOGETHER.

USE THEM IN PEACE.

A mysterious warning becomes a blessing, a preaching. There is science fiction that imagines the freaky magnificence of the unknown, and there is science fiction that imagines the unknown is there to guide us helpfully along, replacing God with aliens who might as well be God.

You might argue that that’s what 2001 is about, in the end, but I don’t think you can say that 2001 ‘s view of its mystery Monolith aliens is all-the-way positive; certainly, there’s no scene where a Monolith explains, in subtitle, that they are saving humanity because they need humanity’s help in 3000 years. (A nihilist would argue that 2001 is about how Earth is a laboratory and we’re the lab rats.) Maybe you think 2010 is clearer in its intentions than 2001 — in which case, maybe those good intentions are just vastly less interesting. Maybe 2010 makes you feel better than 2001 because everyone in 2010 is nice. (Even HAL is nice in 2010 ).

In 2014, Christopher Nolan delivered Interstellar , a film which gilds wormhole physics with daddy-daughter emotionality. It’s a film I gather some people love — currently #32 on the IMDB top 250 , whatever that means anymore. And it’s unquestionably a nice film. It declares that the whole fourth dimensional architecture of time and space is made out of love. It sends a man into a wormhole, where the universe sends him back to his daughter. Interstellar even has its own variation of Heptapods: Extra-dimensional beings, evolved from humanity, who exist outside of time, so they can save humanity and provide third-act catharsis.

My favorite character in Interstellar is the one nominal bad guy. Matt Damon plays “Dr. Mann,” probably an homage: Nolan loves Michael Mann , as all good people do . The characters find Mann, all alone in his corner of the universe, a space-tossed Crusoe with a touch of space madness. While everyone else in the film wants to save Earth, Dr. Mann thinks it’s high time to start a new world. He tries to kill Matthew McConaughey, but Mann’s true villainy is philosophical. In a film that lands on the idea that the universe runs on love, the voice of cruel logic (and actual, coherent science) can only sound demonic. McConaughey’s not a scientist, but darn it, he wants to save his daughter: That’s a nice sentiment, and Interstellar builds its whole universe so that he can be right. (Probably inadvertently, McConaughey in Interstellar proves McConaughey in Contact right; there is a Higher Power out there, and it is Pro-Goodness, and Pro-Cute Daughter.)

Dr. Mann could’ve been one of the heroes in When Worlds Collide , a 1951 movie about the global fear that erupts when a rogue planet approaches Earth on a collision course. When Worlds Collide doesn’t read “serious” the way Interstellar or Arrival both do — it’s B-movie pulp from the atomic era — but its ending is impressively blunt, and serene in its weird acceptance of global catastrophe. There is no Space-God there to save anyone. Earth ends; but the movie claims that doesn’t have to be the end. When Worlds Collide sends a few lucky survivors to a very Biblical vision of a new Eden, but it doesn’t ignore the other Biblical visions, the flood that ends the world once, and the fire next time.

For all their apocalyptic scene-setting and mild paranoia about political figures, Interstellar and Arrival are comforting films. They declare that the great unknown can become the known; that, in fact, the unknown knows us, and loves us. They replace the spiritual higher power with a pop-science Higher Power, extraterrestrials and extradimensionals. (The scientists in the movie are their apostles; Anne Hathaway’s character in Interstellar makes a lot more sense if you put a priest’s collar around her neck.)

They have a lot in common with The Martian , starring Damon as a man who becomes his best self when he’s left alone in the cosmos. the Bizarro-world inversion of Dr. Mann. I’m hesitant to even mention The Martian in an essay about science fiction; the film is famously accurate about everything besides the dust storm at the beginning. Actually, the most fantastical part of The Martian is the stuff back on Earth, where NASA has bottomless funding and China shares technology with any government that needs it. (Apparently, The Martian is set a couple decades in the future, making the film’s disco obsession even less convincing.)

It’s an endearing vision, no doubt. We’d like to imagine a NASA free of bureaucratic oversight, where everyone’s a Jodie Foster and no one’s a Tom Skerritt. Perhaps you think we need comfort right now, more than ever. Perhaps the possibility of the dark mystery of the universe is too much to take, when Earth itself feels dark and mysterious. Arrival , like 2010 before it, wants to make you believe that humanity can be saved. These movies speak to us the way their Space-Gods speak to the characters onscreen: They advise us, in blunt terms, to be nice. And we should be nicer to each other. I didn’t need a movie to tell me that; and I don’t think sincerity equals profundity. If you think good intentions make a movie great, go watch Crash .

Contact believes in humanity, too: In science, in hard work, in the great cosmic experiment of generations working toward something greater than ourselves. It’s not a perfect movie, but it still feels more alive to the problems of our moment than any of our recent real-ish science fiction films.

But if you want a heavy dose of science fiction that hits your heart and your mind — if you thought Arrival was nice, but maybe you want something thoughtful enough to suggest that Space-God won’t always be there to save us — then this month, in the shadow a dark universe, the movie I’d recommend is Sunshine .

Scripted by Ex Machina ‘s Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, Sunshine is the go-to example of Why Studios Don’t Make Science Fiction Without Rayguns. A little ways in the future, Earth is in trouble. The sun is dying. On a mission to bring our shining star back to life, a crew of nuclear astronauts are flying straight to the center of our solar system, carrying a nuclear payload the size of Manhattan. Nobody onboard talks says as much, but everyone knows that they’re probably on a suicide mission. Every day, they’re one step closer to saving the world; every day, one step closer to dying.

The film cost $40 million, took years to make, required everyone involved (including Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans pre- Captain America , and Rose Byrne pre-everything) to believe passionately that they had to work hard on an unsettling space movie with zero mass appeal about a spaceship moving realistically slowly toward total doom. The film came out, made less than $4 million in America, was generally vilified by scientists and totally ignored by critics. (It’s a cruddy business, sometimes, making movies.)

“It lost track of itself,” is how Garland recently described Sunshine . In the same interview, Garland explains that the film’s production ran on two impulses: As a screenwriter, he viewed it as being more reflective and Ex Machina -ish, where Boyle as a stylist “has a terrific instinct toward viscerality and compulsion,” which is maybe a roundabout way of saying that Boyle really thought Sunshine needed more action scenes.

That creative battle is all onscreen. Sunshine is initially a movie about bummed out people from a ruined Earth looking into space and pondering the cosmos. Then there’s a big action scene set to John Murphy’s rousing score. Then the crew, grieving, ponders some more. At times, Sunshine almost feels like the Platonic Ideal of a sci-fi trip film, a stoner space movie about people in space acting stoned. (One of the crew members, a psychologist, keeps on staring at the sun, in druggy ecstasy.)

Hard decisions have to be made. The crew turns against itself, kind of, and people turn against themselves, for reasons that are maybe justified. Then the movie takes an infamous left turn: An astronaut (played by Mark Strong looking like a fleshpile from Hellraiser ) from a previous mission somehow gets onboard, and starts killing people. What had been a capital-m Meditation On The Cosmos becomes a slasher film. It’s possible that Sunshine needed the final act turn to get made — that, unable to find financing for a film about smart people feeling sad on a spaceship, someone had the brilliant idea of wedging in a serial killer.

The end result is a mess, but even its least convincing plot turn has some resonant truth. The maniac astronaut has found religion, see. Unable to deal with the brutal unknown extremes of the inner cosmos, he has fled inward, and excavated something like fundamentalism. “All our science, all our hopes, our dreams, are foolish!” he says, and “When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God!” He’s a suicide bomber on a death-cult mission, but I’m not so sure his instinct is different from Amy Adams in Arrival , or Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar . Those films pretend to look outward, but they really look inward; they want to be about humanity, but they’re actually about the people brave enough (and Space-Gods powerful enough) to save humanity.

By comparison, the ultimate good guy in Sunshine is Cillian Murphy, playing a physicist who seems a little shy, a little blunt. He’s inhuman, but only in the sincere manner of doctors and scientists, better with molecules than people, better with string theory than the ties that bind us together. He’s named “Robert Capa,” an homage to the war photographer famous for his pictures from Omaha Beach. The reference is a code, I think; it’s as if Sunshine is saying that witnessing can be heroic, that seeing the universe at its worst can actually be a gateway to a higher state of being. None of the actions taken by Murphy’s character are obviously good-guy heroic. He’s on the ship so he can detonate a nuclear bomb and restart the sun: The veritable Original Sin of modern physics, recontextualized as an act of cosmic resurrection.

Murphy claims that working on the movie made him an atheist . And popular conception often ties atheism into nihilism, because most people think it’s a bummer to imagine that we’re alone in the universe. More heartwarming, no doubt, to imagine that aliens will arrive, teach us their language, bring peace to the world, bring serenity to the human heart. That’s what happens in Arrival , and pardon me for thinking that worthwhile sentiment is its own kind of cynicism: Belief that things have gotten so bad that we need a higher power to save us, all of it buoyed by a portrayal of global geopolitics so simplistic that all the problems of our superpowered world can be fixed with a phone call.

Sunshine offers another possibility, tough, bleak, and truly hopeful. Maybe the sun won’t shine again for us. But we can make sure it shines for someone else.

On-Set Fires And Jodie Foster's Costume Made Contact's Wormhole Scene A Slog To Film

Jodie Foster in Contact

Robert Zemeckis' "Contact" hit theaters in July 1997 and managed to break the mold of sci-fi drama prevalent during the time. The reasons were manifold. Ann Druyan, who was the creative director at NASA at the time, along with partner and acclaimed astronomer Carl Sagan, envisioned an unconventional tale about a headstrong female scientist on a mission. Moreover, the aliens in "Contact" were not terrifying monsters that needed to be defeated for humans to survive, making it a very different from popular films of the time like "Alien Resurrection," which was also released in 1997.

The premise of "Contact" is simple: A gifted scientist, Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), stumbles upon an odd signal sent from a star system named Vega. After years of research and preparation, Ellie is sent on a lone mission to Vega, wherein she makes first contact with aliens. However, Ellie's account of this transcendent experience is rejected by the scientific community, as there is no recorded evidence of this potential breakthrough for humanity, except for Ellie's personal testimony. "Contact" raises questions about science and religion, the belief systems that emerge from both camps, and whether they can coexist in some capacity.

"Contact" suffered from a cursed production process ever since Druyan and Sagan conceptualized the story, and the film had to overcome plenty of obstacles before it saw the light of day. The film's stunning wormhole scene was particularly challenging to pull off for a myriad of reasons. Here's how everything panned out (and worked out) for the scene in question.

An indescribable experience

The wormhole sequence in "Contact" is clearly a standout in the film. Ellie is launched into the unknown alone and loses contact with mission control the moment she travels through a series of wormholes. This experience is unlike anything humanity has ever experienced: After her vessel comes to a standstill, Ellie looks out and witnesses a celestial event. The galaxy is beautiful, and words fail her for the first time. " Poetry! They should have sent a poet ," she says — a sublime remark that encapsulates the essential truth of the universe.

Understandably, this scene was extremely difficult to shoot. Foster worked with a blue screen and had to simulate the experience of traveling through wormholes and witnessing both beauty and terror. How does one emote an experience never seen or felt before? While Foster carries the scene with incredible skill and conviction, practical hurdles made the filming process long and tedious. In an article commemorating the 25th anniversary of "Contact," Foster told Vulture about how the set caught on fire during filming:

"My stunt double, Jill, was bolted in. They had to get her out quickly. It was a really gnarly fire, and it went fast, and it burned down one of our stages. It must have been an electrical thing or something."

Zemeckis assured that no one was hurt due to the incident, but they had lost a couple of precious hours. Another hurdle was that Foster had to be shaken violently on the shuttle chair to mimic fast space travel, and she prepared for this part by going on back-to-back Magic Mountain rides. I'm guessing it wasn't very pleasant for her, but not all heroes wear capes.

Capturing the unknowable

Another technical hurdle was Foster's astronomer costume, which was bolted to the shuttle chair for the scene. This made the violent shaking extremely unpleasant for Foster, as there was technically no escape from the "Joan of Arc armor" she had to don. Foster also had to talk/move backward to capture the chaotic, otherworldly nature of the sequence. While going through the motions of reacting to something unknowable, Foster had to repeat the line "I'm okay to go" many times, partly because it is a real phrase used by NASA scientists during missions. However, "Contact" imbues the line with multifaceted meaning. " I'm okay to go " becomes a grounding mantra for Ellie, as it alludes to her willingness to step into the next frontier.

Apart from this, nailing the mechanics was tough for Zemeckis, as the aim was not to replicate a scientifically accurate hypothesis, but to tap into an artistic interpretation of the experience. Zemeckis told Vulture that the wormhole travel mechanics were "completely arbitrary," while Foster affirmed that the scene was about "our own fears and desires" and not meant to be true to life. 

The rest of the cast, including David Morse (who played Theodore Arroway) and Matthew McConaughey (who played Palmer Joss), praised Foster's performance in that scene, as her expressions were powerful enough to evoke what we are meant to feel. Morse said:

"I'm pretty sure it took them two weeks to shoot that. I'm always astounded when I look at the scenes because I know she [Foster] was alone. She was having to create for herself all that emotional life."

Undoubtedly, Foster deserves all the praise. Despite the inherent challenges of capturing the absurdity of the scene, "Contact" was able to weave everything together in an intensely poetic fashion. The rest is history.

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Jodie Foster (left) and Kali Reis as Danvers standing in a gloomy snow-covered landscape in front of a police car with its lights on.

‘Some of the sloppiest writing I’ve ever watched’: how True Detective’s creator turned on his own show

Nic Pizzolatto’s reposted negative comments, publicly distanced himself and created a dedicated space for criticism on his Instagram – despite viewing figures getting better and better …

I t has been another busy week for fans of men whining on the internet. I mean, when isn’t it? But there has been one particularly engaging meltdown in recent days: Nic Pizzolatto throwing a tantrum over his own show.

Pizzolatto is the creator of the TV franchise True Detective, the first season of which starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and was quickly inducted into the annals of “golden age” TV. The fourth season has just come to an end on HBO (Sky in the UK). Starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, True Detective: Night Country is set inside the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter and faithfully recreates many of the staples of the series: odd-couple cops, an untamed landscape, a suggestion of the occult and some grotesque murders. There are even elements of homage, including allusions to McConaughey’s celebrated ruminations on the nature of time. But did Pizzolatto like it? No, he did not.

Who knows how much of Pizzolatto’s distaste for Night Country comes from it being the first True Detective story that he neither wrote nor directed, with those roles this time going to the Mexican director Issa López. Regardless, Pizzolatto has been criticising the show since its first episode, warning fans they “can’t blame me” if they don’t like it. Since the finale, he has doubled down, sharing screeds from other (male) internet users on his Instagram. Among the key criticisms: the writing in the finale was “some of the sloppiest … I’ve ever watched”, while the show in general was a “hot mess of faux character archs [sic]” which made “repeated heavy-handed attempts” to show that “Man=Problem”. (Now that’s a tattoo-worthy phrase if ever there was one).

Pizzolatto has since, ostentatiously, created a space on his Insta solely for “trolling/support/infighting” around True Detective and the “absolute moral degeneracy and misogyny of anyone who did not think it was good”. Which certainly sounds as if he is over it. And while he is probably using the word “misogyny” sarcastically, it may be a good moment for him to reflect on his actions.

López, meanwhile, has responded gracefully: “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them,” she told Vulture earlier in the run. “[Night Country] is a reinvention, and it is different. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”

Christopher Eccleston standing in an office beside a police officer on a computer

It is difficult to imagine what it would require to remain graceful in the face of consistent criticism from a colleague (López and Pizzolatto are executive producers on Night Country). López’s politeness perhaps also reflects a confidence in her work, something that has been vindicated on screen.

While internet males may consider the season to be a traumatising dud (check the opening paragraph of this review for some heartfelt comments), viewing figures have made it the most popular of the four series so far. The number of people watching has grown as it has gone along and the finale was the highest audience for any individual episode. There is a possibility that this happened because people liked what they saw on the screen.

Night Country did things the other True Detectives did not, and not just by giving decent parts to female characters. It extended the lives of its principals beyond an obsession with their work (although that remained too). It made romantic and familial relations as important as any police procedure, giving the show a richer feel and leaving the characters more rounded. While the Wiccan handicrafts and daubed spirals of season one made a return, they were joined by decaying ghosts and ugly apparitions, creating real moments of horror alongside the pervasive American gothic. Also, and no small matter this, the show tied its plots together by the end, which is not something Pizzolatto always achieved. (As for the “men=problem” problem, the most heroic character in the show is male and all the women have problems!)

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Night Country wasn’t perfect. Some of the dialogue was clunky. If anything, it leaned too far into the horror, while a suspension of disbelief was required if you were truly to believe the world it created. At the same time, it was clearly the best True Detective since the original, opening up new possibilities for the franchise (not least a second outing for detectives Danvers and Navarro). It also did something that may have a wider significance: it created a gritty show about tough cops who happened to be women. Perhaps Pizzolatto may yet be inspired by it.

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Jodie Foster never wanted to be an actor: “I had no choice”

For her captivating work in 'True Detective: Night Country', the screen icon is earning career-best reviews – but she still wonders how differently her life could have gone

E ven in Jodie Foster’s extraordinary career – 80-plus acting roles, 10 TV and film directing credits, two Oscars – True Detective: Night Country feels like a standout project. “Not only have I never had such good reviews for a show that I’ve worked on,” she says, “but I’ve never had so much interest in something from the beginning. Like, we had to bat people off.”

Foster stars in the chilling limited series, True Detective ‘s fourth iteration, as beleaguered police chief Liz Danvers. She’s stationed in Ennis, Alaska, a small mining town so far north it’s plunged into darkness for two months a year. Danvers has a fraught, fractious working relationship with state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), her former crime-fighting partner, but they team up again when eight scientists at a remote research facility go missing.

For both women, this reunion is practical rather than sentimental. Because tests reveal that a severed human tongue found at the scene belongs to Annie K, an Indigenous woman whose savage unsolved murder still haunts Navarro, they know there must be a connection between the two cases. The stakes are raised again when the scientists’ naked bodies are found on the outskirts of town in a gruesome frozen mass. Is it murder, suicide, or a sinister combination of the two?

“There’s an honesty to Danvers, even though she’s just awful”

Danvers has a strong if skewed sense of justice, but Foster doesn’t mince words when it comes to describing her flaws. “She’s a racist, she has all this implicit bias, she’s totally unconscious, she’s completely self-absorbed,” the actress says. “She tells jokes that aren’t funny. She likes to needle people and just piss them off. And she reacts to things without really understanding why.”

Foster was drawn to Night Country , her first full TV series in 50 years, partly because her character felt so confronting. “There’s an honesty to Danvers, even though she’s just awful,” she says. “So to me, it’s really an opportunity to investigate those shadow sides [of human nature] that people don’t like to talk about.”

The enthralling series finale, which Foster likens to a “perfect movie”, has been forensically dissected by fans since it premiered on Monday. But NME meets Foster a few days earlier, at a fancy co-working space in west London, where she’s about to tape a chat show.  When Foster walks in the room, she is friendly, focused and unaffected. She is also instantly familiar as Jodie Foster, the iconic star of Silence of the Lambs and The Accused , but she carries herself lightly. Later, when we ask what she’s most proud of in her career, she says: “That I think I’ve managed to be a real person.”

jodie foster space travel

We dive into a very spoiler-heavy discussion of the series finale. At the climax, Danvers and Navarro discover that the scientists died in an act of vengeance.  When a group of Indigenous women who cleaned their facility realised they murdered Annie K six years earlier, they rounded them up with guns, then led them onto the ice, naked, to meet their fate. The cleaners’ leader Bee (L’xeis Diane Benson) tells Danvers and Navarro that some kind of matriarchal spiritual presence “ate their fucking dreams from the inside out and spit their frozen bones”.

As an executive producer on the series, Foster was able to “have an impact on” the scripts written or co-written by showrunner Issa López, who previously directed the fantastical 2017 horror film Tigers Are Not Afraid . But when Foster read the final episode, she felt instantly that it “should not be touched”.

She believes Danvers even shows some personal growth. “She takes a back seat – she’s not talking during that period [where the women confess],” Foster says. “It really is about them: their story, their voice.” Because the local authorities have already determined that the scientists died in a tragic accident, Danvers and Navarro decide to turn a blind eye. “Look, she’s a corrupt cop – we knew that about her,” Foster says. “But she also understands that justice is difficult to come by.”

True Detective: Night Country is the anthology series’ first instalment not to be steered by its creator, Nic Pizzolatto. Instead, new showrunner López has refreshed and reinvented the previously male-dominated franchise by centering knotty, complex female characters. “The beautiful thing about the last episode is that you’re confronted as an audience member with the fact that you’ve never even thought about those [cleaning] women,” Foster says. “They were invisible to you but they’ve been there all along. There’s something sort of meta about that that I really liked.”

True Detective needed new blood after 2017’s disappointing third season, which was propped up by Mahershala Ali’s sharp central performance, but not everyone has welcomed the overdue injection of female energy. After Night Country’ s first episode aired in January, López wrote in a since-deleted tweet that “bros and hardcore fanboys have made it a mission to drag the [show’s] rating down” on Rotten Tomatoes . “I wouldn’t call it a backlash,” Foster says today, “but there is an under-layer of discomfort with strong women.”

Fans also spotted that Pizzolatto seemingly distanced himself from Night Country in Instagram comments screengrabbed and shared on Reddit. When we ask if it feels disappointing that the series creator has said he had “no input” – despite being credited as an executive producer – Foster replies plainly: “Well, he didn’t.”

“No, he really didn’t,” she continues. “Sometimes you get, like, one little comment and then it suddenly mushrooms into this huge thing. For us, it’s kind of a good thing because it gets people talking about the show. But honestly, we’ve never met him so it wasn’t like he ever had a conversation with us.” Even López has never met him? “No, he was gone from True Detective long before Issa was brought in. “

jodie foster space travel

F or much of her career, Foster has been described in the press as a “private person”, a phrase that carried hints of homophobia until she addressed her sexuality publicly for the first time at the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. “I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age,” she said in a moving and carefully worded acceptance speech .

It’s fair to say she still keeps a low-profile between projects, but there is nothing closed-off about Foster today. Actually, she talks very candidly about her unusual career arc, which has involved only a handful of acting roles in the last decade. Why is that? “Because I’ve spun through a bunch of things I’ve already done that I don’t want to repeat,” she says. “You know, I didn’t become an actor because I wanted to act. I had no choice; I started at [age] three.”

Foster, 61, says she realised early on that she lacked “the same impulse to act” as other actors. “I don’t like to be the centre of attention,” she explains. “I have a big picture view of things – I’m not a moment person. I don’t love wearing my emotions on my sleeve. Like, there’s no part of me that was meant to be an actor.” Reconciling this with the success and attention that acting brought her sounds almost torturous. “If anything, it was kind of a cruel job to give to somebody that was as internal [as I am],” Foster says. “Yeah, it was a kind of a cruel job, actually, so I had to make sense of it.”

Foster’s career began when her older brother, Buddy, auditioned for a TV advert and she was cast instead. She was such a natural that she amassed more than 25 TV credits before her breakthrough movie role in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic Taxi Driver . For her performance opposite Robert De Niro as the self-assured child prostitute Iris Steensma, Foster scored her first Oscar nomination (of five to date). She was just 14 at the time.

Coincidentally, they’re all up for Oscars this year: Scorsese and De Niro for Killers of the Flower Moon ; Foster for her poignant performance in Nyad as Bonnie Stoll, the rock-solid confidante of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening). “Everybody’s like, ‘You’re going to see Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese at the Oscars – is that kind of wild?'” Foster says, before disarming us with a joke. “I’m like, ‘Well yeah, we’re so old now.'”

“I don’t even know how I’m still here”

Foster essentially grew up on screen, but segued to adult roles so smoothly that she had two Oscars by the time she was 30. She won her first Best Actress award for her powerful performance as rape survivor Sarah Tobias in 1988’s The Accused , then collected a second three years later for Silence of the Lambs . Her fiercely intelligent rendering of Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee assigned to grill Anthony Hopkins’ serial killer Hannibal Lecter, remains her signature role.

Is she used to the idea that everyone she meets will remember her from a film? Her other big hits include body-swap comedy Freaky Friday (1976), psychological drama Nell (1994) and survival thriller Panic Room (2002). “I think you do get used to it,” Foster says. “Aaaaand… it’s just not normal that people know you already and you don’t know them. The life of a public figure is really weird and different people have to make sense of it in different ways. And I feel for young people, because, like, how do you do that? I don’t even know how I’m still here.”

Still, Foster says she has never stopped acting – albeit more sporadically in recent years – because she loves “being part” of the creative process. Has True Detective: Night Country made her want to make another TV series? “Yes, but as a director,” she replies. In the past, Foster has helmed episodes of Orange Is the New Black and Black Mirror , but never an entire series. “It’s such a full commitment: so many years of your life,” she says. “But yeah, this experience makes me want to go behind the camera.”

At this point, she knows what she brings to the table. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t have a skill – it’s a skill-less skill, but I have a skill.  Maybe it’s just because I’ve done it for so long?” she says. “But it gets frustrating – even as a director, sometimes – because you’re like, ‘Oh, just let me do it!’ It’s something I just know how to do, I guess, that I have some connection to. I don’t know why, but I do.”

‘True Detective: Night Country’ is available to watch now on Sky Atlantic, streaming service NOW and to download and own on digital platforms

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Jodie Foster Will Put Her Hands and Feet in Cement in Front of Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre

Turner Classic Movie's Classic Film Festival will honor two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster with a ceremony in Los Angeles on April 19

Stefanie Keenan/Getty

Jodie Foster has left a major mark on Hollywood over her career, and soon she will leave a literal imprint!

On Tuesday, Turner Classic Movies announced that Foster, 61, will have her hand and footprint plastered into the ground outside the area's famous TCL Chinese Theatre during the 15th annual TCM Classic Film Festival on April 19. Foster's 1991 classic The Silence of the Lambs will also screen as part of the upcoming festival, with the actress herself introducing the movie.

“The truth is Jodie Foster deserves a hand and footprint ceremony solely for her work in 1976 alone – films she made when she was 13 years old – Taxi Driver , Bugsy Malone , Freaky Friday and T he Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane . You could see her range already,” TCM Classic Film Festival and film critic Ben Mankiewicz said in a statement Tuesday. "Nearly 50 years later, we have an answer to this question: ‘What is a Jodie Foster character?’ The answer is: There is nothing she can’t play."

The TCL Chinese Theatre opened in 1927 and has seen dozens of stars plant their hands and feet into wet cement in its nearly 100 years-long history. The TCM Classic Film Festival has honored 11 stars with hand and footprint ceremonies outside the theater in recent years, most recently honoring Lily Tomlin (2022), Billy Crystal (2019), Cicely Tyson (2017), Carl and Rob Reiner (2017) and Francis Ford Coppola (2016), per a release.

Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Foster has been acting since she was a child. Her first onscreen credits came for episodes of various television shows in in the late 1960s and early '70s, and her first film roles came in 1972's Napoleon and Samantha and Kansas City Bomber . She is currently nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the upcoming 96th Academy Awards for her performance in last year's Nyad ; the nomination is her fifth. Foster previously won Oscars for her performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. Her other nominations came for Taxi Driver and Nell .

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The actress' career longevity means that the 47 years separating her Oscar nominations for Taxi Driver and Nyad are the longest time between an actor's first nomination at the awards ceremony and their most recent. Katharine Hepburn was nominated for two awards 48 years apart, as The Rake recently reported in a feature on Foster.

“That’s cool, I like that statistic. Look, I worked in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the noughts, the tens and the twenties... That’s amazing, all those different eras," she told that outlet of the statistic.

Foster also recently starred in HBO's most recent season of True Detective . Her hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., takes place April 19.

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Jodie Foster - Movies

Top Movies of Jodie Foster Alicia Christian Foster was born in Los Angeles on November 19, 1962. Her parents divorced three years before she was born, and she was conceived when her mother, Brandy, was visiting her father, Lucius, for child support. Alicia's siblings nicknamed her "Jodie," a name she has used in her profession. When she was just three years old, Jodie began acting in commercials, most notably for Coppertone sunblock. When she was five, Jodie landed her first acting role on the TV show Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). She stayed very busy as a child actress, working on television programs such as The Doris Day Show (1968), Adam-12 (1968), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969), The Partridge Family (1970), Bonanza (1959), and Gunsmoke (1955). In movies, her roles included playing Raquel Welch's daughter in Kansas City Bomber (1972) and a delinquent tomboy in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). Jodie first drew attention from critics with her appearance in Taxi Driver (1976), in which she played a prostitute at the tender age of 12 (she was 13 when the movie premiered) and received her first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She went on to have a very successful career in her early teens with leading roles in the Disney films Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977). The last film Jodie made during this era was the coming-of-age drama Foxes (1980), before enrolling at Yale University. Tragedy struck Jodie during her Freshman year when a crazed and obsessed fan named John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan to impress her.

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  • IMDb Rating
  • In Theaters
  • Release Year

1. Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

G | 92 min | Adventure, Drama

Two young children, who, rather than part with an old pet lion who was once a circus performer, go on a perilous mountain trek to stay with a recluse friend.

Director: Bernard McEveety | Stars: Michael Douglas , Jodie Foster , Johnny Whitaker , Will Geer

Votes: 1,081

2. Kansas City Bomber (1972)

PG | 99 min | Drama, Sport

Roller derby skater K.C. Carr tries to balance her desire for a happy personal life and her dreams of stardom.

Director: Jerrold Freedman | Stars: Raquel Welch , Kevin McCarthy , Helena Kallianiotes , Norman Alden

Votes: 1,493

3. Tom Sawyer (1973)

G | 103 min | Adventure, Musical, Family

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn investigate a suspicious graveyard murder and more in this musical version of Mark Twain 's novel.

Director: Don Taylor | Stars: Johnny Whitaker , Celeste Holm , Warren Oates , Jeff East

Votes: 2,564

4. One Little Indian (1973)

G | 90 min | Comedy, Family, Western

On the run from the Cavalry, a man tries to disappear while accompanied by two camels and a runaway boy. His escape is made harder when he meets a widow and her daughter who may turn him in.

Director: Bernard McEveety | Stars: James Garner , Vera Miles , Pat Hingle , Morgan Woodward

5. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

PG | 112 min | Drama, Romance

A recently widowed woman is on the road with her precocious young son, determined to make a new life for herself as a singer.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Ellen Burstyn , Kris Kristofferson , Mia Bendixsen , Alfred Lutter III

Votes: 27,019 | Gross: $18.60M

6. Taxi Driver (1976)

R | 114 min | Crime, Drama

A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro , Jodie Foster , Cybill Shepherd , Albert Brooks

Votes: 912,064 | Gross: $28.26M

7. Bugsy Malone (1976)

G | 93 min | Comedy, Crime, Family

The classic gangster story of Bugsy Malone told with an all-child cast.

Director: Alan Parker | Stars: Jodie Foster , Scott Baio , Florence Garland , John Cassisi

Votes: 19,255 | Gross: $2.78M

8. Freaky Friday (1976)

G | 98 min | Comedy, Family, Fantasy

A mother and daughter find their personalities switched and have to live each other's lives on one strange Friday.

Director: Gary Nelson | Stars: Barbara Harris , Jodie Foster , John Astin , Patsy Kelly

Votes: 13,968 | Gross: $25.94M

9. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

PG | 91 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

A thirteen-year-old girl, who lives with her absentee father, befriends a disabled teenage amateur magician and invites him, gradually, into her tenuous struggle against a predatory local neighbor.

Director: Nicolas Gessner | Stars: Jodie Foster , Martin Sheen , Alexis Smith , Mort Shuman

Votes: 17,942

10. Stop Calling Me Baby! (1977)

100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A man hires a P.I. to find a hot woman he fell in love with. The woman lives with her underage teen sister who dreams about having sex for the first time, but wants a real man. That's when the P.I. shows up and stirs up the household.

Director: Eric Le Hung | Stars: Jean Yanne , Jodie Foster , Sydne Rome , Bernard Giraudeau

11. Beach House (1977)

106 min | Comedy

Different groups of people share cabin #19 for changing at an Italian beach.

Director: Sergio Citti | Stars: Catherine Deneuve , Jodie Foster , Mariangela Melato , Michele Placido

12. Candleshoe (1977)

G | 101 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Welcome to Candleshoe, a stately English manor where a swashbuckling pirate hid a fortune in Spanish doubloons centuries ago. And that's what young orphan Casey and a sly con man are determined to find.

Director: Norman Tokar | Stars: Jodie Foster , David Niven , Helen Hayes , Leo McKern

Votes: 4,897

13. Foxes (1980)

R | 106 min | Drama

A group of four teenage girls come of age in the asphalt desert of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley arranged with a blazing soundtrack and endless drinking, drugs and sex.

Director: Adrian Lyne | Stars: Jodie Foster , Cherie Currie , Marilyn Kagan , Kandice Stroh

Votes: 4,980

14. O'Hara's Wife (1982)

PG | 87 min | Comedy, Drama

A mourning workaholic's deceased wife comes back to haunt him, but in a benevolent way, trying to get him to change his dreary attorney life into a life where he has a relationship with his children and is happier with himself.

Director: William Bartman | Stars: Edward Asner , Mariette Hartley , Jodie Foster , Perry Lang

15. The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

R | 109 min | Comedy, Drama

A family weathers all sorts of disasters and keeps going in spite of everything, in a film noted for its wonderful assortment of oddball characters.

Director: Tony Richardson | Stars: Rob Lowe , Jodie Foster , Paul McCrane , Beau Bridges

Votes: 9,055 | Gross: $5.10M

16. The Blood of Others (1984 TV Movie)

175 min | Drama, History, Romance

WWII. In German occupied Paris, Helene is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her ... See full summary  »

Director: Claude Chabrol | Stars: Jodie Foster , Michael Ontkean , Sam Neill , Lambert Wilson

17. Mesmerized (1985)

PG | 94 min | Drama

An orphaned New Zealand girl married to an older, wealthy businessman learns to deal with his strange sexual desires.

Director: Michael Laughlin | Stars: Jodie Foster , John Lithgow , Michael Murphy , Dan Shor

Votes: 1,005

18. Five Corners (1987)

R | 90 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.

Director: Tony Bill | Stars: Jodie Foster , Tim Robbins , Todd Graff , John Turturro

Votes: 3,859 | Gross: $0.97M

19. Siesta (1987)

R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

An American skydiver wakes up in the middle of nowhere in Spain and must recount the last five agonizing days to figure out how she got there.

Director: Mary Lambert | Stars: Ellen Barkin , Gabriel Byrne , Julian Sands , Isabella Rossellini

Votes: 2,428 | Gross: $0.70M

20. Stealing Home (1988)

PG-13 | 98 min | Drama, Romance, Sport

Ex-baseball player Billy comes home to receive his childhood darling's ashes.

Directors: Steven Kampmann , William Porter | Stars: Mark Harmon , Jodie Foster , Blair Brown , Jonathan Silverman

Votes: 4,908 | Gross: $7.47M

21. The Accused (1988)

R | 111 min | Crime, Drama

After a young woman suffers a brutal gang rape in a bar one night, a prosecutor assists in bringing the perpetrators to justice, including the ones who encouraged and cheered on the attack.

Director: Jonathan Kaplan | Stars: Kelly McGillis , Jodie Foster , Bernie Coulson , Leo Rossi

Votes: 39,625 | Gross: $32.07M

22. Catchfire (1990)

R | 116 min | Action, Comedy, Crime

A witness to a mob assassination flees for her life, running from town to town and switching identities along the way, but she cannot seem to elude Milo, the chief hit man sent after her.

Director: Dennis Hopper | Stars: Dennis Hopper , Jodie Foster , Dean Stockwell , Vincent Price

Votes: 4,516

23. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

R | 118 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.

Director: Jonathan Demme | Stars: Jodie Foster , Anthony Hopkins , Scott Glenn , Ted Levine

Votes: 1,535,051 | Gross: $130.74M

24. Little Man Tate (1991)

PG | 99 min | Drama

A single mother raises a child prodigy on her own, struggling to give him every opportunity he needs to express his gift.

Director: Jodie Foster | Stars: Jodie Foster , Dianne Wiest , Adam Hann-Byrd , Alex Lee

Votes: 15,934 | Gross: $25.01M

25. Shadows and Fog (1991)

PG-13 | 85 min | Comedy

With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.

Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen , Mia Farrow , Michael Kirby , David Ogden Stiers

Votes: 18,054 | Gross: $2.74M

26. Sommersby (1993)

PG-13 | 114 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

A farmer returns home from the Civil War, but his wife begins to suspect that the man is an impostor.

Director: Jon Amiel | Stars: Richard Gere , Jodie Foster , Lanny Flaherty , Wendell Wellman

Votes: 23,077 | Gross: $50.08M

27. Maverick (1994)

PG | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

Bret Maverick, needing money for a poker tournament, faces various comic mishaps and challenges, including a charming woman thief.

Director: Richard Donner | Stars: Mel Gibson , Jodie Foster , James Garner , Graham Greene

Votes: 118,387 | Gross: $101.63M

28. Nell (1994)

PG-13 | 112 min | Drama

In a remote woodland cabin, a small-town doctor discovers Nell - a beautiful young hermit-woman with many secrets.

Director: Michael Apted | Stars: Jodie Foster , Liam Neeson , Natasha Richardson , Richard Libertini

Votes: 30,694 | Gross: $33.68M

29. Contact (1997)

PG | 150 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Jodie Foster , Matthew McConaughey , Tom Skerritt , John Hurt

Votes: 291,432 | Gross: $100.92M

30. Anna and the King (1999)

PG-13 | 148 min | Drama, History, Romance

The story of the romance between the King of Siam and widowed British schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens, during the 1860s.

Director: Andy Tennant | Stars: Jodie Foster , Chow Yun-Fat , Bai Ling , Tom Felton

Votes: 38,820 | Gross: $39.26M

31. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)

R | 104 min | Comedy, Drama

A group of Catholic school friends, after being caught drawing an obscene comic book, plan a heist that will outdo their previous prank and make them local legends.

Director: Peter Care | Stars: Kieran Culkin , Jena Malone , Emile Hirsch , Vincent D'Onofrio

Votes: 14,138 | Gross: $1.78M

32. Panic Room (2002)

R | 112 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

A divorced woman and her diabetic daughter take refuge in their newly-purchased house's safe room when three men break-in, searching for a missing fortune.

Director: David Fincher | Stars: Jodie Foster , Kristen Stewart , Forest Whitaker , Dwight Yoakam

Votes: 295,262 | Gross: $96.40M

33. A Very Long Engagement (2004)

R | 133 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

Tells the story of a young woman's relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One.

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet | Stars: Audrey Tautou , Gaspard Ulliel , Jodie Foster , Dominique Pinon

Votes: 75,776 | Gross: $6.17M

34. Flightplan (2005)

PG-13 | 98 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

A bereaved woman and her daughter are flying home from Berlin to America. At 30,000 feet, the child vanishes, and nobody will admit she was ever on the plane.

Director: Robert Schwentke | Stars: Jodie Foster , Peter Sarsgaard , Sean Bean , Kate Beahan

Votes: 171,074 | Gross: $89.71M

35. Inside Man (2006)

R | 129 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

A police detective, a bank robber, and a high-power broker enter high-stakes negotiations after the criminal's brilliant heist spirals into a hostage situation.

Director: Spike Lee | Stars: Denzel Washington , Clive Owen , Jodie Foster , Christopher Plummer

Votes: 395,160 | Gross: $88.51M

36. The Brave One (2007)

R | 122 min | Action, Crime, Drama

Struggling to recover emotionally from a brutal assault that killed her fiancé and left her in a coma, a radio personality begins a quest for vengeance against the perpetrators that leaves a bloody trail across New York City.

Director: Neil Jordan | Stars: Jodie Foster , Terrence Howard , Naveen Andrews , Nicky Katt

Votes: 63,214 | Gross: $36.79M

37. Nim's Island (2008)

PG | 96 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Imagination and reality collide when young Nim's father goes missing at sea. Fate brings to her the author of the Alex Rover series, her favorite books, and together they try to find Nim's father.

Directors: Jennifer Flackett , Mark Levin | Stars: Jodie Foster , Gerard Butler , Abigail Breslin , Michael Carman

Votes: 36,748 | Gross: $48.01M

38. The Beaver (2011)

PG-13 | 91 min | Drama

A troubled husband and executive adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communication.

Director: Jodie Foster | Stars: Mel Gibson , Jodie Foster , Anton Yelchin , Cherry Jones

Votes: 50,598 | Gross: $0.97M

39. Carnage (2011)

R | 80 min | Comedy, Drama

Two pairs of parents hold a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a fight, though as their time together progresses, increasingly childish behavior throws the discussion into chaos.

Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Jodie Foster , Kate Winslet , Christoph Waltz , John C. Reilly

Votes: 132,517 | Gross: $2.55M

40. Elysium (I) (2013)

R | 109 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

Director: Neill Blomkamp | Stars: Matt Damon , Jodie Foster , Sharlto Copley , Alice Braga

Votes: 468,974 | Gross: $93.05M

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  1. Space travel through a wormhole (Jodie Foster in "Contact" movie, 1997

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  2. Space travel through a wormhole (Jodie Foster in "Contact" movie, 1997

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  5. 25 years later, Contact is still one of the best alien movies of all time

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COMMENTS

  1. Contact Space Travel (HD)

    Great scene where Jodie foster travels through space to meet aliens.

  2. Contact (1997 American film)

    Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan.Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact.It also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom ...

  3. Contact (1997)

    Contact: Directed by Robert Zemeckis. With Jena Malone, David Morse, Jodie Foster, Geoffrey Blake. Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine.

  4. Elysium (2013)

    Elysium: Directed by Neill Blomkamp. With Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga. In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

  5. 5 Best Films About Space Exploration (& 5 The Worst), Ranked According

    Jodie Foster completely steals the show with her compelling performance. ... As far as space exploration films go, Armageddon can not be relied on as a successful take on the intricacies of space travel and only serves as a flippant, badly thought out action drama. Best: Moon (2009) - 7.9 .

  6. Contact (1997)

    Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) works for the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Guided into science and communication -- starting with Amateur Radio -- by her now-deceased father Theodore (David Morse), she listens to radio emissions from space, hoping to find evidence of alien life. she works with her colleague Kent Clarke (William Fichtner), who is blind, but loves the ...

  7. Contact

    Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It is a film adaptation of Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name; Sagan...

  8. Why 'Contact' Is the Most Important Space Movie Ever Made

    A collage of sounds from Earth travel alongside you as you zoom out of the solar system and arrive at a star called Vega, 26 light-years away. This is how the 1997 movie Contact begins. In a later scene, nine-year-old Eleanor Arroway — played as an adult by Jodie Foster — sits on her bed and talks with her father about the vastness of space ...

  9. Contact movie review & film summary (1997)

    Actual physical space travel, or an experience not unlike the one had by the hero of "2001," who finds himself in an environment that has apparently been created by information in his own mind? ... Jodie Foster is an ideal candidate for the role of Ellie Arroway. Smart, to the point, she explains that the purpose of Science is to discover Truth ...

  10. The 'Contact' Movie Explained: What Does the Ending Mean?

    It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of life sending a message from outer space. The movie weighs science against faith as it attempts to unwrap the mysteries of the universe. The cast of Contact is incredible, with Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt ...

  11. Contact

    In this Zemeckis-directed adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) races to interpret a possible message originating from the Vega star system. Once first contact with ...

  12. Contact

    Like Jodie Foster's hopeful space voyager in the picture, "Contact" may not travel quite as far as it hopes to go, but the trip is worth taking nonetheless. More down-to-earth and "realistic" in ...

  13. All Jodie Foster Movies Ranked

    (Photo by Orion/ courtesy Everett Collection) All Jodie Foster Movies Ranked. 1974 drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is already one hell of a way to jump-start a pre-teen acting career for Jodie Foster, yet it would be her second collaboration with director Martin Scorsese that made her an international star. 1976's Taxi Driver was a shocking game-changer in a decade full of them, with ...

  14. Arrival: The film's phony good intentions, and paradox of 'realistic

    And then she has to audition for the chance to travel through space — to fulfill her whole life's work! — in front of a UN-ish panel, ... where everyone's a Jodie Foster and no one's a ...

  15. Jodie Foster filmography

    Foster at the premiere of Home for the Holidays (1995). Jodie Foster is an American actress and filmmaker. Foster began her professional career as a child model at age three appearing in a Coppertone commercial. Following appearances in numerous advertisements, she made her acting debut at age five, in 1968 with the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., following which she appeared in a string of ...

  16. Space travel through a wormhole (Jodie Foster in "Contact ...

    Acest videoclip face parte din articolul: http://geea2012.blogspot.ro/2013/12/portalurile-trecerea-dintre-lumi.html

  17. On-Set Fires And Jodie Foster's Costume Made Contact's Wormhole ...

    In an article commemorating the 25th anniversary of "Contact," Foster told Vulture about how the set caught on fire during filming: "My stunt double, Jill, was bolted in. They had to get her out ...

  18. Jodie Foster & Kali Reis on kicking butt in 'True Detective'

    Oscar-winning actor Jodie Foster and champion boxer Kali Reis talk teaming up for "True Detective: Night Country". ... Space + Science World ... Travel Destinations

  19. Contact (1997)

    Contact: Directed by Robert Zemeckis. With Jena Malone, David Morse, Jodie Foster, Geoffrey Blake. Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine.

  20. 'Some of the sloppiest writing I've ever watched': how True Detective's

    Starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, True Detective: Night Country is set inside the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter and faithfully recreates many of the staples of the series: odd-couple ...

  21. Contact Space Travel HD

    Contact Space Travel (HD) KravennnPublished on Oct 22, 2009andEvangelos VOLOTASPublished on Nov 26, 2018==Great scene where Jodie foster travels through spa...

  22. Jodie Foster never wanted to be an actor: "I had no choice"

    But NME meets Foster a few days earlier, at a fancy co-working space in west London, where she's about to tape a chat show. When Foster walks in the room, she is friendly, focused and unaffected.

  23. Contact (1997)

    Although Jodie Foster has won two Oscars in her career I think her best work was done in Contact, a film where the only recognition it received was a nomination for Best Sound. ... Considering the economics of space travel not referring to 'money', but expending 'energy' The Message defines the most judicious method for establishing contact ...

  24. Jodie Foster

    Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.She has also earned numerous honors such as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2013 and the Honorary Palme d'Or in 2021.. Foster began her professional career as a child model and ...

  25. Jodie Foster Will Put Her Hands and Feet in Cement in Hollywood

    Jodie Foster on Sept. 14, 2023. Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Foster has been acting since she was a child.

  26. Jodie Foster to Receive Prestigious TCL Honor; Capital One Enhances

    As Jodie Foster prepares to leave her mark in Hollywood's history, and Capital One redefines the landscape of travel rewards, both developments signal a forward momentum in their respective domains. Foster's ceremony and Capital One's program enhancements are poised to leave lasting impressions, demonstrating the power of recognition and ...

  27. Jodie Foster

    A divorced woman and her diabetic daughter take refuge in their newly-purchased house's safe room when three men break-in, searching for a missing fortune. Director: David Fincher | Stars: Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam. Votes: 295,198 | Gross: $96.40M. 33.