Moment of Contact: Documentary Review and Commentary
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A rather poorly constructed documentary that lacks coherence. Not worth paying to see but if you’re interested in the subject of UFOs, when the movie comes to streaming check it out for free at your leisure.
Ever since 2017, when the New York Times put their establishment stamp of approval on the UFO topic by running a story which contained previously unseen video of UAP’s (unidentified aerial phenomenon) obtained by Navy pilots, UFO stories have been taken more and more seriously by the mainstream media.
The giggles and eye-rolls which accompanied previous reporting on UFOs and the snarky comments about “little green men” have diminished as serious-faced military men and steely-eyed national security people have stepped forward to say, “hey, something really is happening here, and we better figure out what the hell it is!”.
I’m a UFO afficionado who deep down wants to believe…so much so that I do actually believe, but I’m also compulsively, if not pathologically, distrustful of the government, most particularly of military and intelligence agencies. So, I was excited by that NY Times article that started the recent surge of respectability for the subject of UFOs, but didn’t trust the two men who came to the fore as the faces of the UFO respectability program, Luis Elizondo and Christopher Mellon (of THE Mellon family).
Not surprisingly, as time has worn on that 2017 NY Times article has been exposed as being riddled with shocking inaccuracies and intentional misinformation, and Elizondo and Mellon have been shown to be basically the Butch and Sundance of UFO bullshitters.
To be clear, the establishment media, which is just the propaganda wing of the military and intelligence industrial complex, is not “all-in” on UFOs. Hell, just this past week a story ran in the Times that declared that those famous Navy videos were of “drones or trash” according to “unnamed sources”. That article and its sourcing should be a giant red-flag that a great battle is being waged behind the scenes over the UFO topic and the old guard is not going to go quietly into that good night.
The one thing we can be assured of is that Truth will not be on the agenda when the UFO topic is bandied about in the media or by government, military and intelligence toadies.
That most recent cynical Times article poo-pooing UFOs is a predecessor to a UFO/UAP report that is supposed to hit the public this coming week. The report has been getting a lot of hype in the UFO enthusiast community, with breathless yet familiar claims that “disclosure” of alien life and UFO visitation would be coming in the near future, but the “drones and trash” Times article has poured cold water on that utopian notion.
One man who was vociferously declaring that the upcoming UFO/UAP report was going to be very big news was documentarian James Fox.
Fox captured the recent ‘taken-more-seriously’ UFO zeitgeist in his worthwhile 2020 documentary The Phenomenon, which covered the various UAPs that befuddled Navy pilots in the Atlantic and Pacific and were captured on Navy cameras and instruments.
Other filmmakers have tried to follow in Fox’s footsteps. For example, J.J. Abrams produced a four-part docu-series for Showtime in 2021, lethargically titled UFO, but that was a rather forgettable piece of work.
Another Fox UFO documentary is 2009’s I Know What I Saw, which is well-made but not nearly as good as his very first foray into the subject which was his 2002 doc Out of the Blue.
Out of the Blue is the Citizen Kane of UFO documentaries. It’s a fantastically well-made movie and a truly remarkable piece of work that, despite often being somewhat difficult to find, is a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.
The bottom line is that Fox is now, and has been for quite some time, the preeminent UFO documentarian and has made a name for himself being the UFO doc guy.
In recent days Fox has once again been in the spotlight. Hell, nowadays you can’t turn around without stumbling across Fox either on social media or TV because he’s out promoting his new documentary, Moment of Contact, which chronicles an alleged 1996 UFO crash in Varginha, Brazil, which included the supposed retrieval of one or two alien beings.
Moment of Contact was released on October 18th and is currently available via Video on Demand on Amazon and Apple, with the price to purchase (it’s not available to rent) being $19.99.
As someone with a longtime interest in UFOs, who is well-read and well-versed on the subject and who is also a fan of Fox’s earlier work, I was excited to see Moment of Contact, but was less-than-enthused to pay $20 for the privilege, so I waited until I got a copy for free from a fellow UFO researcher.
After having finally watched the documentary, all I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t pay for it.
Moment of Contact is easily Fox’s weakest effort in terms of UFO documentaries.
The story of the Varginha UFO/Aliens is as compelling as it gets, as it covers a UFO crash, aliens and alien retrieval, Brazilian and US military intervention and strong-arm cover-up, as well as human death, yet Fox somehow manages to make a documentary about it that’s as dull as dishwater.
Moment of Contact struggles to keep audience attention because it’s simply much too scattered in its focus, incoherent in its narrative and underwhelming in its execution.
The film’s failures are many. For example, it fails to piece together a coherent timeline of events in Varginha back in 1996 on the night of the crash and the days following. Minor mis-steps, such as constantly changing perspective of an overhead map meant to show the space where portions of the incident occurred, highlight the lack of precision and attention to detail that the subject requires. This inability to give the viewer an adequate understanding of the time and space where events took place, makes for a confusing and frustrating viewing experience.
Another minor example is that the majority of people in the film are Brazilians who speak Portuguese. Fox has an interpreter with him and she repeatedly mis-interprets what people are saying to him, which is evident by reading the sub-titles and contrasting that with what she says to Fox. The mis-interpretations are minor, but once again they speak to Fox’s failure to attend to detail and be precise. How can we trust what the film is claiming if we can’t trust what it is literally being spoken on film?
Fox compiles numerous eyewitnesses and they tell compelling stories, but to the film’s detriment, he’s never able to gather any substantial evidence to back up their remarkable claims.
For instance, Fox never uncovers paperwork proving U.S. Air Force flights into the area which would at least make the claim of US military and intelligence agency involvement substantial. Hospital records of the man who allegedly died after coming into contact with an alien, or even his military records, would also increase credibility, but Fox fails to provide them.
I understand these are difficult things to acquire and that subterfuge is the name of the game for officials concerning this subject, but with no electronic data like radar, or official documents – like flight, military or hospital records, then we are left with just witness accounts from regular people and rampant speculation.
At one point Fox brings the mayor of Varginha in and the mayor tells him he thinks the story is true. This mayor has no connection to the case whatsoever, and considering the city of Varginha embraces the UFO story and may be angling to use it as a tourist attraction, his beliefs have less-than-zero credibility.
The rest of the film feels as half-hearted and superficial as that visit from the mayor of Varginha.
Fox has recently been on social media claiming that there are two witnesses who say there is video evidence of the alien captured in Varginha. He claims these people have seen the video and he is working hard to get it, and once he does, he will share it with the audience.
If in fact Fox uncovers video of an alien, then it’s a true game-changer, but until then, Moment of Contact is a rather vapid documentary into the fascinating story of the Varginha incident that does a disservice to the very complex subject of UFOs.
To be clear, I actually believe the story of the witnesses to the Varginha UFO, I just think Moment of Contact fails to feature them together in a coherent and insightful way, and thus ends up not bringing anything of note to the discussion.
If you’re a UFO enthusiast, Moment of Contact will be frustratingly rudimentary and not worth a $20 price tag. If you’re someone new to the subject, the story might be eye-opening, maybe even too eye-opening to be believable. Either way, what happened in Varginha deserved a much better documentary than James Fox’s rather flaccid Moment of Contact.
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