The Twelve Chairs is a comedy by Mel Brooks, set in the Soviet Union in the 1920's. In the beginning, an old woman dies, taking with her the knowledge of where she hid some precious stones during the Russian Revolution. The rest of the movie is about several competing fortune hunters scrambling around Russia, trying to find them. The beginning introduces the major players and their vices.
A song that sounds like a Russian folk song begins, "Hope for the best, expect the worst!" as we see a con artist impersonating a disabled vet reveal his true ambulatory condition as he follows a woman in the marketplace. The son of the old woman stamps her cheek "cancelled" as she expires. I forget what the corrupt priest played by Dom Deluise does in the intro. It sounds rather bleak, but it's really funny. I think it's also Brooks' least-known comedy, at least from back in his early '70's heyday. It helps to know a little about that period in Russian history, in order to get all the sight gags.
Contact, the movie starring Jodie Foster, is not as good as the book it's based on, but the opening scene is the high point of the movie. It's based on the short film "Powers of Ten" you may have seen in school. It starts out with the camera on earth, and you can hear snippets of many different current radio and tv broadcasts. Then the camera starts pulling out into space, and you can hear the broadcast chatter become both older, ie, music of the 60's, then 40's, bits of historic newscasts going back in time, and also sparser as you get further into space, as there are fewer competing broadcast signals.
The message is that all the radio and tv signals that have ever been broadcast on earth are transmitted through the relative vacuum of space indefinitely, at the speed of light. Jody Foster's character bases her research on the idea that aliens will recognize these signals, and respond.