Dir: Denis Villeneuve



Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

1h 56min. Cert 12a

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In the past few years Denis Villeneuve has become a director to watch, with every project he touches receiving nothing less than glowing praise from the majority of critics. Well, maybe Enemy is an exception, but still, Villeneuve makes good films. Nothing wrong with them. They’re solid. And yet for me, they’ve never managed to tip past the point of good and into great. Could a film about communicating with aliens really be any different?

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Well there’s a lot that you may be familiar with if you’ve seen Sicario or Prisoners. Bleak greyness to the colours and general tone, strong performances from talented actors and well written characters, all the usual suspects are there. But Arrival is a world away from Villeneuve’s typical tense thrillers, lurking in a place different and inherently risky. A place I like to think of as the Nolan-dominated world of cerebral sci-fi.

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And in that world there’s a lot that can go wrong. Make your sci-fi too ‘out there’ and you could lose a large chunk of audience. Make it too complex and you could do the same. It’s a tough balancing act to pull off. And it’s a world that most studios would shy away from, even after the success of Inception. But it didn’t put Villeneuve off. And thank fuck for that, because Arrival is brilliant.

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Amy Adams stars as the language professor tasked with communicating with the aliens, and she’s so good that her performance alone would be enough to carry most films. Renner and ole lazy-eye Whitaker don’t have to do much, but still do it well. And bar one weird moment with Adams’ hair, the visual effects are beautiful. The first contact scene is an instant classic that will stay with me.

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Then there’s the score from Icelandic Jóhann Jóhannsson, which fitted the aesthetic perfectly. Arrival really is one of those films where every component fits together flawlessly. So much so that I’m already running out of synonyms for ‘perfectly’. It’s also worth mentioning that the soundtrack featured Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight, which some might recognise from Shutter Island. It’s a great piece of music that fits perfectly (there it is again) with Arrival.

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And yet for me, the real star is the writing. The structure and pacing of the story is faultless, managing to be both thought-provoking and deeply emotional. It’s the kind of film that you could think about for hours after, something you could argue over with your friends for hours. And if none of your friends have seen it, well then I’d bet that there’s already hundreds of ‘Arrival story explained’ videos out there, just waiting for your comment. It’s a real ‘thinker’.

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But there are a couple of things that don’t quite work for me. Most notably a couple of incredibly cheesy lines towards the end that aren’t really needed. And some of the alien noises are a bit lazy, falling back on the type of sound that seems to be everywhere in film at the moment. But, other than those small issues, there’s really nothing bad to say.

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Arrival is so far up my street that it’s parked outside my house, engine purring as it calls for me to come out and join it. Visually beautiful, thought-provoking and original, it’s everything I want from cinema. So get out that Marvel wallet, slip on those Darth Vader Vans and go watch Arrival. Remember what it was like to think. You won’t regret it.

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Rating: 4.5 / 5