The alternative

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2001)

*Warning - may contain spoilers*
I've seen "Contact" by accident just yesterday, and I didn't expect much of it. At least I remembered that when it came out in '97, most critics said it was much too long and too theoretical to fascinate an audience. How they were wrong! In my opinion, Robert Zemeckis' movie belongs to the best science fiction films of the 90s: It is thrilling and elegant, moving and intelligent. It has heart and soul, great actors (Foster, Woods, John Hurt... and Bill Clinton!) and some very nice SFX. The voyage to Vega is one of the most beautiful special effects sequences I've ever seen; it even reminded me of the psychedelic travel to Jupiter in Kubrick's "2001 - A Space Odyssey"! But foremost, "Contact" is the first movie of that genre since Spielberg's "Close Encounter Of The Third Kind" (1977) to deliver a peaceful message - and that is, between martial alien battles like "Independence Day" and "Starship Troopers" which can be seen as standard of modern sci-fi, a very pleasant alternative. 8/10