Way, waaay better than Interstellar. That's a low bar actually. Interstellar was visually stunning, but absolute crap otherwise.

I liked contact and I liked interstellar.

The book is far better. They completely removed the "artist signature" from the movie.

I think both are fine, actually. The movie definitely departed from the book, especially near the end.

Three Body Problem as well for detecting signal.

Pluribus as well

Also “Three Body” is the Chinese version of this, which is more in-depth.

For your kids, “Elio” is basically “Contact” for kids. It didn’t get fantastic reviews, but I suspect it appeals to the HN crowd more.