Arrival

Well, the year is almost over. Movie wise, 2016 was a let down. Mr. Remake and Mr. Childish Animation came over for dinner, but luckily left in time for the mature movies to happily come in. Finding Dory, Deadpool, and 10 Cloverfield Lane were all pretty good (Except Cloverfield’s ending.) I saw The Jungle Book twice in theaters. Hacksaw Ridge was awesome. A Monster Calls made me cry, and La La Land made me sing. I didn’t have time to see Hell or High Water, but it’s on my movie list. I’ve heard Doctor Strange was good for a Marvel movie. I would’ve gone to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them if I wasn’t upset about it setting up another Rowling series. Moana was better than Frozen. Nocturnal Animals has an overall intriguing idea and premise. And speaking of Amy Adams! It is time to review my favorite movie of the year, Arrival.

First off the movie starts out with an emotional punch to the gut. Louis (Amy Adams) is happy with her daughter and everything, until cancer kills her little girl off. It’s very well acted and seems like a short story in itself, and after I saw my mom tearing up from the scene, the movie has moved on to Louis teaching as a university linguist teacher. The rest of the movie is slow, suspenseful, and keeps sprinkling more conflicts and concepts to keep you oblivious to what’s coming next. Several scenes actually made me want to vocalize out loud how awesome they were. This director, Denis Villeneuve, knows what he is doing. He loves to drag out scenes so you can understand what is fully happening. Even the wide landscape shots give the viewers information on what is happening. The sound design is astounding. When the first aerial shot opens and the music lingers in with the exposition of the ship I shuddered. The music is creepy and ominous, just like the aliens. Called heptapods, these dark skinned aliens look like walking hands, literally the stuff of nightmares. These beings’ appearance do not help their cause when people start freaking out about twelve gigantic, supernatural ships hovering over the ground with tall, creepy, and hand like beasts inside that do not understand how to communicate with mankind. This is Louis’ job, to communicate to the heptapods and find out why they are on earth.

Ian (Jeremy Renner) is the scientist that works with Louis. He is my second favorite character in this movie. He is super pro science, and very childish. When Louis and Ian first enter the research base in front of the ship there’s an emergency body bag that passes by them. Louis shows obvious concern because she’s a normal person, but Ian kept looking back to it like a kid that pissed his pants. Throughout the movie he is the silent and witty humor, with his charming childlike expressions and his fanatic scientific mind. The character is visibly shown through Jeremy Renner’s performance and it made his character almost as good as Louis, even though he wasn’t that important.

This is a beautiful and thought provoking movie, but there are some nit picks I have to mention. This film is not about the aliens. This film is about Louis. It is her experience of the aliens and the military that help her. The reason for the heptapods being there is answered, but kind of glanced over. This is because the movie also focuses on the reason for mankind’s unity over what the aliens wanted. Yes, I said it; the aliens’ reason for coming to earth is the third most important thing in this movie. That is my only problem with the movie. I understand why the director and writers wanted to go the direction they did, because it is an amazing story. But don’t advertise the third biggest question on the poster and barely answer it.

In summary, this was the best movie I had seen in theaters, ever. I admit, I was crying in the end. The characters are well thought out and very well performed. The cinematography is beautiful. The overall moral is pretty good, and the ending is brilliant. It’s not a closed ending; the director leaves a window of thought and opportunity that the audience can guess what happens next. This film greatly receives 10/10 stars. I saw it twice in theaters and think it is one of the top 10 movies I have ever seen.