Arrival is based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. The film stars Amy Adams as linguist Louise Banks. Jeremy Renner plays a physicist. When 12 alien space ships show up, the world is thrown into a panic. Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are recruited by the U.S. Army to be part of a First Contact team. The key to dealing with the aliens–dubbed Abbott and Costello by Renner–is to learn their language. While Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner work to crack the alien’s language, the rest of the world predictably stops cooperating with each other and gets ready to attack the space ships (although the aliens have done nothing hostile). Arrival isn’t Independence Day. It’s more like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you’re looking for an intelligent Science Fiction movie, then Arrival fits the bill. GRADE: B+
I saw it Friday. B+ seems about right. Some people were grumbling as I left the theater. They didn’t get the ending. Would rather have Will Smith come in and blow the aliens away I guess.
Steve, my wife who has Supergirl-like hearing told me some people exiting ARRIVAL complained about the ending, too. She also heard one guy say he fell asleep during the movie. I wouldn’t have minded Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum blowing up an alien mothership!
This is one of the few recent movies that I thought might be in the “venture to the theater rather than wait for it to show up on Netflix” category–although I think there’s a general assessment that the ending is weak. But isn’t that the case with most “first contact” stories? Getting there is the story–what happens after contact is made never seems as riveting as the build-up. Even CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, my favorite contact movie, ends up with Richard Dreyfus standing inside what resembles an extremely well-lit hotel lobby.
Deb, if you read the Ted Chang story first, that will help you decide on whether you want to see ARRIVAL in a theater or in the comfort of your home. Amy Adams shows why she’s one of the best actresses on the big screen right now.
This won’t be a theater one for me, but I agree with your opinion of Amy Adams. (I still shudder when I think of denise richards playing a scientist in a James Bond movie)
Maggie, Bill Crider admires Denise Richards as a Nuclear Physicist in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. Me, too!
Seeing this next Sunday, hopefully …
Sergio, expect a cerebral movie experience when you watch ARRIVAL.
OT: one movie I really want to see is LA LA Land with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. A MUSICAL
They showed the trailer for LA LA Land before the Arrival. Didn’t impress me but I’m not a big fan of musicals.
Steve, my wife is eager to see LA LA LAND for the music and dancing. I’ve heard it’s very tragic, too.
Sounds really interesting, so I looked around and found a lot of heavy stuff on wiki concerning this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
aka the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis …
And I also now found that Chian’s story is connected to Samauel R Delaney’s Babel 17 which appeared 50 years ago (won’t give the link because then the comment stays in moderation …)
Wolf, I love SF that deals with alien languages. One of the best is Jack Vance’s SON OF THE TREE.
I read the NY Times review and it reminded me of the Jodie Foster “first contact” movie, at least superficially.
Jeff-About the only thing they have in common are that they are first contact stories and don’t devolve into action movies.
The ending was about the only thing I liked. Not sure why I liked it so little. I found it tedious, too many similar moments. Too much inky circles. Somehow I expected to be awed like I was in CLose Encounters and wasn’t. But the mother/daughter story worked for me.
Patti, you’re right. ARRIVAL dragged in spots.