Contact (1997)

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: James V. Hart, Michael Goldenberg, Based on Contact by Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan
DOP: Don Burgess
Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt

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

The film covers a lot of ground in two and half hours of its running time taking the intelligence of its audience for granted. I especially liked the fact that they dropped eminent domain there without explaining it. Matthew McConaughey's character is sort of a new age spiritual Czar for the White House and the conflict between science and faith is portrayed with his relationship with Jodie Foster's scientist character. From an aging standard point of view, even though it is not set on a future timeline, what it got very correct is the presence of private players in space science with a very Elon Musk like billionaire funding Ellie's SETI project when the Govt pulled the plug.

The film had got renewed interest on the wake of release of Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' and not just because of the Mathew McConaughey connection. The supposed scientific accuracy of Interstellar had various scientists citing Contact as the one which captured the working of a scientist in the most accurate manner even though the time dilation at the end doesn't make much sense from a scientific point of view. But what works for Contact is that it gets emotional part of the story right and is a good mix unlike Interstellar, whose emotional scenes managed to get laughs out of the audience. In that sense, it is a rich man's Interstellar. I ended in the same feel good state that I had with Ridley Scott's Martian. I do think it is quite an underrated film and it is the less well known Zemeckis films, Flight being the other one, that I liked much more than his famous ones like Forrest Gump and Back to the Future.

Rating: 4.5/5

Back to the Future (1985)

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers:  Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale
Cast:       Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Le Thompson

A young man is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-travelling DoLorean invented by his friend, Dr. Emmett Brown, and must make sure his high-school-age parents unite in order to save his own existence.

This is one of those films that almost everyone have seen and I hadn't yet. I have caught bits of it on TV but never watched it in its entirety. Raging Bull is also another one of these. It came one year after the release of 'The Terminator', which is really the first mainstream hit with time travel as its major theme. It was also used in 'Planet of the Apes' but Time Travel aspect of the film was more of a twist rather than it being the major theme of the film. So in the 80s, you had two successive time-travel hits in two different genres-action and comedy. Both are indeed considered as all time classics even though the first Terminator is rated inferior to its sequel by many, which I don't agree with.  

As for Back to the Future, it is a very good watch but I really didn't think it was all that great. That is not because it not aging gracefully, it has, but because the whole Steven Spielberg vibe of the film is something that don't sit well with me. The film was produced by him with Zemeckis as the director and the whole redneck 'American Dream conformity' family thing is just an irritation for me. That is only a minor point and it is a film that is part of many people's childhood memories and I can totally understand why many just love it. By the by, I am also not a big fan of Indiana Jones franchise and I do think these are  films that you will appreciate to the full extent only if you were part of that time period. 

The film has McFly travelling back in time and accidentally preventing the first meeting of his parents. To his horror, his mother has a crush on him, and his whole existence depend on making sure that his parents end up together. One could actually make a really dark film having similar story line but with the crush going the other way, creating a Freudian Oedipus complex nightmare. There is a film idea for you and the guys who did 'Predestination' might be interested I guess. 

I am not a big fan of Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away) but I did enjoy 'Flight', which was a proper R-Rated film with adult subject matter. Most of his early films are for children and that is precisely the demography that will love it. There are really small nuggets of historical anachronism in the films like skateboarding in 1955, Ronald Reagan as a political figure etc but none of them have the same impact as Hula Hoops in 'Hudsucker Proxy'. There are three films in the franchise with Zemeckis directing all of them. First one was the highest grossing film in 1985 and other two, which were back to back productions, didn't quite achieve the same level of success. 

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                        

Flight (2012)

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writer:    John Gatins
Cast:       Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly

An airline pilot saves almost all his passengers on his malfunctioning airliner which eventually crashed, but an investigation into the accident reveals something troubling.

This is return to live action film for the director Robert Zemeckis after a gap of almost twelve years. He is firmly in the Spielberg school of film-making of which I am not a fan. The only films of his that I have seen before watching this are Forrest Gump and Cast Away both of which I find to be very overrated but good one time watches. I know that I should watch 'Back to the Future' for which he is most famous for. Unlike those films this is an R rated film and is his first one of them since early 80s. He also reckons that at $31 million budget, this is his cheapest film since 1980 when adjusted for inflation. 

This film is also a great one time watch with it being stylish and comical at times but largely being a character study. Some people can be put off by the tonal changes that it takes but I enjoyed it. The highlight of the film of course would be the central performance by ever reliable Denzel Washington. Support cast is also great which also includes a cameo from John Goodman who appears always with 'Sympathy for the Devil' as the background score. One could argue that the ending is a bit moralizing but it is a credible one. If they had ended it any differently, people would be complaining about glorifying an addict. 

The incident with the flight is loosely based on 2000 crash of Alaska Airlines Flight that left no survivors and was also inverted by its pilot. Some of the in flight things that are shown early, which constitutes only a small part of the film, are a bit Hollywoodish but can be excused since it is basically a character study. Overall it is a very good watch with a strong performance from Denzel Washington.

Rating: 3.5/5