Contact touches on a number of important themes: God/atheism/science, extraterrestrial life, loss of a parent, love (for the wrong person), global-scale efforts, and the frustration a rational person can experience when they are deprived of proof and brought at the same level with mystics.

That was the frustrated element of the film for me: Jodie Foster has gone through an implausible experience of which she had first-hand experience but no proof. Forced to prove her experience in front of an examination committee, she had to admit that the only grounds on which she could demand acceptance was faith. At the end of the movie, however, proof did appear, but Jodie was left unaware of it. For that reason, I’d rate the movie 8/10 instead of 9/10.

This was an accidental consumption, an error at the hands of the DVD rental place, but I thought I’d watch it anyway before I stormed back to the shop in rage.

I’ve never read the book so I can’t say whether the film’s a fair representation of it or not, but suffice to say it’s put me off reading Carl Sagan for the rest of my life. Science and religion on an equal footing when it comes to searching for the truth? Er yeah, obviously.

It’s my own fault, really. I knew the minute I heard that awful, heart warming, Hollywood chord in the opening scene that this was not going to be my kind of film, but I persevered. And , to be fair, doing so has allowed me to add the sentence “Contact is a really rubbish film” to my repetoire of knowledgeable things. You do indeed learn something new everyday.

Nice graphics at times, but why bother when you can look at real photos from the Hubble telescope instead, and not have to put up with a preposterous love story sidling up to you like a 39 year old man with overly gelled hair and bad breath all the way through the film.

An atheist and “a man of faith” falling in love with each other? I don’t jolly well think so.

Seriously, don’t bother. Go and read about cicadas and prime numbers instead. That’s interesting, and far more expressive of the awe-imspiring complexity of the universe we live in than this bland, over-blown, wishy washy refusal to tread on anybody’s toes. If Ned Flanders ever got round to directing a film, I have a strong feeling it might resemble this one quite closely.

Contact is an amazing film to experience, it (in many way) changed my views on some topics for its philosophic perspective. But, Contact is also a triple theme love story, the love of a lost parent, the love of knowledge, and the romantic love of a destined soul mate told with in a tale of both worldly and self discovery. It is the number 1 film on my all time top-ten list.