Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
Another "aliens making contact with Earth" movie, Arrival is about a linguistics translator being called to try and translate an alien language from twelve unidentified objects to determine what their purpose on Earth is. Before I continue the review, I must warn you that I've specifically stayed up late at night in order to write this. Arrival is quite simply the greatest piece of cinema I have seen in recent memory. I'm tempted to say, it is on par with Gravity as my favourite sci-fi movie of all time. Damn, that was exciting to say. Now before you say I'm over-exaggerating, let me give you the reasons for this grand statement. Firstly the acting was powerful from every actor. Amy Adams deserves a nomination for this, she pulls in the emotional heft of her character whilst maintaining an intelligent persona. Jeremy Renner was also good as the witty scientist who accompanies Adams and Forest Whitaker was superb as a military colonel who has the weight of America on his shoulders. Then we go to the direction, Denis Villeneuve has yet to make a bad movie. Prisoners was flawless as a thriller. Sicario was excellent and now Arrival has just topped both of these. If he does not get a nomination for Best Director, something is clearly wrong. The way he slowly pans the camera to create tension, the way he focuses in and out of objects in the same shot, heck even the landscape shots are beautiful. Cinematography was captivating, the fact that the alien objects (that the characters refer to as 'shells') look so photorealistic that you can't determine if they are computer generated or not...is just insane. The musical score was beautiful, switching between a string arrangement for the more emotional scenes and a more sci-fi sounding tune for when the characters enter the 'shell'. It definitely pulled me in as a viewer. This brings me to best part of the film, the story. For a film involving a linguist and decoding a language, one would imagine it would be boring. Quite the opposite, I was so intrigued by the methodologies behind the linguistics and how they were used to decipher the language that it just enthralled me. There are some turns that the film takes that some might not agree with, but in my opinion they worked well. It's good to see a sci-fi film that does not insult the audience's intelligence and it's also good it does not require action to be interesting and thrilling. I could go on for hours...I really could. I've never been so happy for a film to be so good in all my life, and I can't wait to watch it again. Overall, Arrival is intriguing, beautifully composed, confidently directed and is quite simply the greatest piece of cinema in recent memory. I seriously hope everyone watches this.
