Arrival 2016

     Twelve mysterious spacecrafts land in different areas of the globe.  Where did they come from, why are they here, what do they want and how can we communicate are some questions?  No one has any answers about this unique but frightening event.  The military in the United States assembles an elite team to investigate.  Louise Banks is a linguist and she is asked to find a way to understand the communication of the aliens.  This team is racing against time because some countries are ready to engage in all out war with the spacecrafts.  Many countries have shut down communication between each other and will not share anything they’ve learned about the aliens or the ships.  The team determines the aliens are heptapods and they designed their craft from the form of an asteroid called 15 Eunomia.

     Ted Chiang is the writer of this story and he struggled to figure out how to show a character gaining knowledge of what will happen in the future.  He thought about drugs or mediation but these choices didn’t seem interesting.  The shape of the spacecrafts is that of a strange egg, a pebble or oval shape with a feel of menace and mystery.  There is a complication within this film that is in the background from the beginning but you don’t find out what it is until the end.  I have a problem with the way this story hovers along with the hovering of the aliens.  It stretches my vision of time and space plus it doesn’t film events in chronological order but I don’t know that until the end.  There is a mystery that I’m not sure about and at times I don’t know there is a mystery?  3* (This movie is OK)

116 min, Drama directed by Denis Villeneuve with Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma, Abigail Pniowsky, Julia Scarlett Dan, Jadyn Malone, Frank Schorpion.

Note:  Imdb 8.0 out of 10, 94% critic 82% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 3*, Amazon 3.7* out of 5* with 2875 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Montreal and Bas-Saint-Laurent, Quebec, Canada.  The original title for this film was Story of Your Life from the title of the short story but test audiences didn’t like it.  There is another film with this title from 1957.