Going in to Arrival, I did not know what to expect. It had been getting stellar reviews, but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that it would be Encounters 2.0. After viewing the film, I can happily report that my fears were completely misguided. Arrival is a fantastic film that fully cements Vellenueva's status atop the Hollywood directing totem pole. Both his last two films (2013's Prisoners & last year's Sicario) made my top ten list of the year, and both were criminally under watched and underappreciated. This film appears to already be doing decent at the box office, so I hope more and more people come to appreciate his talents.
It's hard to discuss this film without giving away some of its secrets, so I'll have to be as generic as possible. The basic premise of the film is that aliens have arrived and are trying to communicate with us through 12 different space crafts. The US government hires a world renowned linguist (played superbly by the always great Amy Adams) and a physicist (the always reliable Jeremy Renner) to decode their language as quickly as possible in an effort to decipher whether these new out-of-world beings are friend or foe. That's about as much as I can go into the plot without spoiling the big reveal in the film.
I loved this film because it resonates so well in today's toxic world. It's about hope. About the toxicity of "Us vs Them." About understanding and compassion. And, most importantly, about the importance of not rushing to judge those that we deem "other."
The cast is phenomenal. The directing is superb. I can't say enough about Villenueva. It's not a flashy guns and explosions alien movie, but the amount of tension that he's able to generate with camera movement and music is incredible. It's a thinking person's movie, and a welcome respite from the flood of horrible news coming across our screens daily. I can't recommend this movie enough. Arrival is the best movie I've seen this year.
4 stars out of 4! Go see it.
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