After watching "The Vast of Night", I got in the mood for that kinda casual scifi/alien movie mystery, so I thought of some other ones and initially I had "Contact" mixed up with
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so I watched Close Encounters and I'll watch Contact either later tonight or tomorrow.
I hadn't seen Close Encounters in forever, I barely remembered it other than the mash potato molding (And mostly because of the movie Canadian Bacon lol) and the song with the lights towards the end, so it was a pretty reasonable watch. I'm not sure if I really loved the movie, it has some odd stuff about it. For one, this movie is basically "Loud Noises the Movie", there are a number of scenes where people are just constantly talking over each other or yelling at each other and its such a weird watch because of it. Also Dreyfus comes across as kind of an ass in this with his characters journey through the film, going to weird places with him, but Dreyfus is good in the role.
Otherwise the effects are pretty cool, the little space ships flying around, the stuff they do when the ship wreaks havoc on the house and the final mother ship at the end. It's a good movie, though even with the length of the movie, I felt like I could've used more out of the film, especially abit of an epilogue and it just kinda ends out of nowhere with no real conclusion. Can't say I'll ever watch it again, but I'm fine with the movie.
Couldn't sleep, so went through
Contact and it was abit different than I remember. When it comes to these types of scifi movies, I really enjoy the mystery, the journey, the problem solving, it gets me invested in the story. Contact is about half that, with the major middle section of the movie being about politics, religion, and a few other things, and that was where the movie was kinda losing me. It all works within the movie, I'm not saying its bad, but to me that stuff is just way less interesting than dealing with the science and mechanics of everything. I also sorta hate one of the story twists before the finale section that I won't specifically talk about, but its a turn that just feels unnecessary to the greater story. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on that, but it comes off a tad odd to me.
It's still a solid watch, though like with Close Encounters, the movies haven't quite hit the scifi itch I've wanted throughout the entire movie...I kinda think I'll keep looking for something else scifi related that is similar. Another that I feel would be close would be Arrival from 2016, but that one I saw a few years ago and remember it being good and I'm trying to find stuff I haven't seen or don't remember a lot about. Might also dip away from the general first contact stuff into maybe stuff like The Martian or Interstellar.
Anyone else got recommendations that sorta hit into this general scifi or what I've seen called as "Speculative Fiction". Like it can have aliens and such in it, but I'm not looking for like Avatar (something I plan to rewatch soon) or Independence Day, that type of alien action/adventure flick, more dealing with scientific or engineering aspects dealing with first contact or space missions and the like.
