It's seemed to become an annual tradition in the last four years. Sometime in October/November an honest-to-goodness adult hard-sci-fi film will release and be one of the more interesting films of the year. Not all of them entirely hold together intellectually (hi, Interstellar), and some lean harder on the "fun" size of the equation than other (hi, The Martian), and some just have bravura film-making and engaging visuals to tide over what is a pretty minamilist plot (hi Gravity), but certainly, this is an annual trend I can get behind, as an old-school scifi nerd who appreciates something trying to be a bit thinky.
"Arrival" is surprisingly tense and engrossing, given for at least half its length it's basically a film about linguistics. Amy Adams plays a linguistic professor called in by the US Military when alien ships arrive all over the world, brought in to try to find ways to communicate with an alien species. The whole film is really her journey as she develops a stronger understanding of a very different kind of sentient life. Dennis Vilneuve directs with engaging simplicity and drive - the small events of first contact loom large as they have planetary implications, and Adams is our engaging, smart centre of it all.
Which is not to suggest all of this is dry sciencey theorising. There's an engaging human story to be told in here too about discoveries and pesonal histories. But there's a lot here that's better discovered by watching the film Go see and enjoy the thinks.
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