Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Contact:
Signs
M. Night Shyamalan made many great genre movies to launch his career in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but none are as quirky, silly, and downright wholesome as Signs, which brings a family together under extraordinary circumstances. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix lead a small cast of great performers reckoning with alien lifeforms reaching Earth.
Spaceman
Spaceman continues the long collaboration between Adam Sandler and Netflix. It’s not my favorite of his movies with the studio, but it seems like Sandler is able to find a pocket within mid-range streaming films that I desperately wish a few more actors or directors would find. Paul Dano co-stars by voicing a furry, arachnid-like extraterrestrial.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Safe to say, I enjoyed The Wrath of Khan. It’s more my speed as an enjoyable, wildly adventurous science fiction film than the first, but hard to judge just one to one. They’re vastly different, and Director Nicholas Meyer is more interested in expanding the universe this time around than Robert Wise was in The Motion Picture. For a movie made in 1982, there’s a lot of technical and visual brilliance instilled into The Wrath of Khan that helps push the industry towards a new era of striking moviemaking where practical effects meets computer generated effects.
Dune: Part Two
There’s nothing like Dune: Part Two, which feels like it could only be conceived by Denis Villeneuve and the best crew around him possible. Everyone is working at the top of their game to create one of the best theatergoing experiences of 2024. Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya star in the science fiction movie that stands against the genre’s best.
Arrival
Arrival is a beautifully presented, excellently edited piece of work that stands as a testament to Denis Villeneuve’s directorial ability and taste. Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner costar in one of the 2010s best science fiction movies.
Ghosts of Mars
Ghosts of Mars is late-period John Carpenter playing his hits at full volume. The craft is not lazy. The premise is too wild, the red-dusted sets too vivid, and the action too outsized to come from a filmmaker on autopilot. It just happens to be one of those odd Carpenter joints that feels like a mash of better Carpenter movies, then gets stranded in the thin air of its own sci-fi pulp.
Leave the World Behind
Sam Esmail, renowned for his work on Mr. Robot, returns to feature filmmaking with Leave the World Behind, a star-studded drama delivered straight to Netflix that operates as an apocalyptic mystery thriller. Boasting a cast of A-listers like Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, and the promising up-and-comer Myha’la, the film carries the weight of its cast’s reputation but, unfortunately, doesn’t quite live up to expectations.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Michael Sarnoski sits in the director’s chair for A Quiet Place: Day One and delivers a movie that often feels like an A Quiet Place movie and a Michael Sarnoski film – just not at the same time. The softer moments between Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are great, but often feel out of place in this larger world.
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 tries to operate in two separate modes, as a humane and personal drama, and a science fiction epic. While these two styles work in their own separate veins, they cross to make a visually stunning, emotionally hollow movie. Denis Villeneuve directs himself into a corner with this one.
Alien 3
The much maligned Alien 3, directed by David Fincher in his first feature length movie, isn’t the catastrophe many claimed it was when it released in 1992. Alien 3 is a movie with many interesting ideas, but a script that holds it back.
READ MORE: Contact (1997)
