Arrival (2016)

[JessePinkman]

Full trailer for Arrival, starring Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker and America's favorite foot:

Synopsis:

When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Spoiler

A little disappointed they showed a bit of the aliens but whatever, I'll still watch it.

[wlk68]

Bumping this up because it's been getting great reviews at Venice, Telluride and TIFF. Cannot wait to see it. 

[afterbite]

Saw this today and it's amazing. Mesmerizing and moving and beautiful - highly recommended.

[ShannaB]

I also saw this today and thought it was very good.  It can be a 'mind trip' for a bit.  I had to laugh when the movie was over and the lights went on, I looked around and there sure were a lot of 'huh?' faces in the audience.  Amy Adams is superb.

[wlk68]

 thought this was excellent. Smart, thoughtful and emotional as well as visually stunning. Amy Adams is wonderful. The film doesn't rush but instead builds slowly. I've read the short story its based on so I knew how things would turn out but it was still a joy to watch it all unfold.

As for the rest of the audience, I could tell when they finally 'got' it - that moment near the end of the movie where everything clicked into place for them. There were audible intakes of breath and soft murmurs all around me in the theater. 

Want to see it again.

Edited November 12, 2016 by wlk68

[JessePinkman]

A lot of reviews are very focused on the twist ending but I hesitate to call that a twist, I just consider it a phenomenal third act. A twist ending to me is something introduced toward the end of the movie and then maybe you get 10 minutes of follow up and then it's over.  But the way this movie is structured the whole point was to get to that ending.

That said, they got me. I thought she was depressed at the start of the movie because her daughter died but no, she's just kind of a sad sack lol.

Amy Adams delivers yet another stellar performance. I even liked that human potato Jeremy Renner for the first time.

This felt like a sort of throwback to the 90s in a lot of ways. Back when we had more standalone big budget movies. Now everything is franchise, franchise, franchise so we're robbed of complete stories on an epic scale.

[AimingforYoko]

I didn't get it until she asked the heptapod, "Who is this girl?" Then my mind exploded.

I kinda have to side with Ian on why he left. I don't know if it was fair to him to tell him Hannah's ultimate fate. I get the impulse to share that particular burden, but if it were me, my poker face just ain't that good.

[King of Birds]

I'm gonna need another viewing.  The line that exploded @AimingforYoko's mind I couldn't hear due to coughing guy behind me. 

The bad part about wanting to check this out again is the unbelievably annoying photography with so much out of focus. I usually like Elswit's work but... the lack of focus on so much of the ...last third of the movie, just pulled me out of the story even more.

[arc]

I'm astounded at how powerful the emotion was and yet how restrained or subtle it was.

(... maybe music aside, the music was not that subtle.)

I will say that my hearing must be going, or Villeneuve's ears are as good as Chris Nolan's, because I couldn't hear a bunch of lines under the very loud sound effects or music. And this was at a nice theater that should theoretically have good sound.

[ApathyMonger]

I think I preferred Sicario overall, but this was great, with an excellent performance by Adams.

Is it weird that when I figured out what her plan was in the third act, my mind went straight to this Simpsons scene?:

 

Edited November 13, 2016 by ApathyMonger

[SeanC]

1 hour ago, ApathyMonger said:

I think I preferred Sicario overall, but this was great, with an excellent performance by Adams.

Is it weird that when I figured out what her plan was in the third act, my mind went straight to this Simpsons scene?:

 

The scene between Adams and Tzi Ma was the only bum note in the film for me.  His dialogue in that conversation doesn't feel remotely like an actual conversation.  They really should have figured out a more elegant way to convey that exposition.

[thuganomics85]

Considering Sicario was my second favorite film of 2015 (behind only Mad Max: Fury Road), was looking forward to this and it didn't let me down.  Denis Villeneuve is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors (need to catch Prisoners, even though I heard it kind of fell apart in the final act.) I just love the looks of his films, the intensity he brings, and how he knows how to build up to a scene.  I liked that instead of seeing the initial UFO appearance like other films tend to do, we never actually see the UFOs and instead they focus on Louise just coming into work, and seeing all the people looking out the windows, her registering how small her class is, and those who are there are just looking at their phones and computers.  And even when she finds out, we only see newscasters talking about it and not the actual ships.  So, when it finally leads up to him revealing it in the helicopter scene, it makes it even all that more powerful.  The reveal of the actual aliens is similar, with them mainly in the fog, but being able to see things like how tall they are and that they have tentacles.  Really well done.

Also glad he got Johan Johannsson back for the score.  I like how he mainly kept his subtle and quiet, but when the time came for more music, he really brought it.  The big moments with just a horn blaring was on point.

Interestingly, a lot of the trailers and advertisements for this seem to equally focus on Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker like it was an ensemble, but it really was Amy Adams' movie, with the other two supporting her.  No complaints here: she was amazing here as always.  Really made Louise a great lead.  Also fun seeing Michael Stuhlbarg again (just saw him on Doctor Strange!).  And as soon as I saw they got "Hey, it's That Guy!" Tzi Ma as the Chinese General, I knew there will be more to him besides just showing his picture on the news over and over again.

Didn't see the twist coming until right before it happened.  The ending was surprisingly emotional.

I guess the only complaint I had is that the subplot of the solider guy (played by Tom from Halt & Catch Fire) never felt fully fleshed out.  I like the idea of showing someone letting his fears and paranoia get the better of him, but it just didn't fully work with me like the rest did.

Despite the differences in story and tone, the films love for language and it is created reminded me of The Martian and how it used botany in an entertaining way to drive the story forward. 

[Eyes High]

I cried in a packed theatre for the last few minutes or so. That was fucking brutal. 

The aliens were intimidating without ever seeming sinister, if that makes any sense. I loved the sounds and the ink logogram effects.

Some of the adaptation was hamfisted and frankly silly compared to the source material. The whole "race against time to prevent global war" was false suspense to begin with, since the aggressive nations were not even making noises about fighting each other but rather the aliens, and since the aliens were pretty benign. And the method Amy Adams used to resolve the dilemma also seemed cliched, as others have pointed out. The original story was very academic (even bone-dry at points), so I can see why the adaptation writer thought the stakes needed to be ramped up, but it could have been done better.

With all that said, the movie had what so much science fiction, especially hard(ish) science fiction, lacks: a great, beating heart. There are lots of science fiction films playing with time, predestination and fate, but this movie affected me in a way no other science fiction film has.

Writing issues aside (which were really more adaptation issues), production-wise everything else was excellent: acting, direction, music, cinematography, visual effects. It was a gorgeous film. I would expect no less from the director of Sicario, though, another stunning film.

Edited November 14, 2016 by Eyes High

[KaveDweller]

On 11/12/2016 at 6:17 PM, AimingforYoko said:

I didn't get it until she asked the heptapod, "Who is this girl?" Then my mind exploded.

I kinda have to side with Ian on why he left. I don't know if it was fair to him to tell him Hannah's ultimate fate. I get the impulse to share that particular burden, but if it were me, my poker face just ain't that good.

Yeah, when she asked that everything snapped into place for me. I was surprised by it, but it also made a lot of sense, because Amy Adams doesn't seem old enough to have had a daughter as old as the one we were seeing in some of those scenes. 

I was impressed by how intense the movie was. I was on edge the whole time. However, I did think the end was a little bit of a let down. I wanted to see more reaction to the heptapods leaving and what their message was. Plus it's a little depressing knowing the future of Hannah and of Louise and Ian's relationship.

[SeanC]

What kind of accent was Forest Whitaker doing, incidentally?  I couldn't place it.

[sally-can-wait]

1 hour ago, SeanC said:

What kind of accent was Forest Whitaker doing, incidentally?  I couldn't place it.

A bizarre one. It actually took me out of the movie for a bit because I had a hard time understanding him and I could not find out why he was speaking with that accent. I have to agree with others who said they liked Sicario a bit more but this one still had some great moments. I did guess the reveal before it happened but it still packed quite the punch. I said to the person I watched it with that it felt like a Pro Choice/Pro Life subplot while at the same time not really making the argument for either side. Very well done. 

[Eyes High]

8 hours ago, SeanC said:

What kind of accent was Forest Whitaker doing, incidentally?  I couldn't place it.

A review I read claimed it was supposed to be a Brooklyn accent.

[Laurie4H]

I thought it was completely pretentious and lame.  What was the point of the aliens?  So they can understand time in the linear sense?   The whole movie was pointless.  And no you don't have to be deep to understand it.

[questionfear]

42 minutes ago, Laurie4H said:

I thought it was completely pretentious and lame.  What was the point of the aliens?  So they can understand time in the linear sense?   The whole movie was pointless.  And no you don't have to be deep to understand it.

The point of the aliens was that they needed to kick start human development because at some point in the future, the aliens were going to need humanity's help.

The movie works best if you see it as part of a purely deterministic universe-the heptapods language unlocks something in the brain that lets you analyze and predict the future based on past experiences; they are apparently so advanced at this that they see in their future they will need us. However, we need to be moved along technologically to get there, so they give us the tools to do so (and they already knew what to do and where to land from their ability to predict the future). 

One thing to consider is that if you do embrace this fully deterministic viewpoint, it implies that Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner had no choice-they were always going to get together and have a child, and they were always going to get divorced, because that was how their lives were going to play out based on everything that had already happened.

I majored in philosophy, and we discussed determinism vs free will in my metaphysics class. The example I remember discussing was of a fighter pilot on a suicide mission; in a free will universe, he's actively choosing to complete a task that will kill him, but in a determinism world, he was always going to end up there, because his decisions were influenced by his parents and upbringing, whose decisions in turn were influenced by their experiences, and so on and so forth until you hit the big bang. If you believe the determinism theory, then the aliens make a lot more sense. 

[phalange]

I saw this over the weekend and it's among my top favorites of 2016. In fact, probably my number one. I went into it without having read the short story and without knowing any spoilers and I'm so glad for that. I did start to put things together a bit before the end thanks to a few scenes: Louise saying, "Ask your father. He's the scientist," Hannah's name being a palindrome, and then finally, the scene where Hannah says her father looks at her differently now. I want to see it again to catch even more foreshadowing. And because it's just a gorgeous movie. 

I love the design of the aliens. Many shows and movies have aliens looking very humanoid, so it's good to see something different. Also, poor Abbott. :( 

[arc]

6 hours ago, questionfear said:

The point of the aliens was that they needed to kick start human development because at some point in the future, the aliens were going to need humanity's help.

It's a macro-level time paradox similar to the micro-level one of Zhang telling Louise his personal number and his wife's dying words.

[questionfear]

16 hours ago, arc said:

It's a macro-level time paradox similar to the micro-level one of Zhang telling Louise his personal number and his wife's dying words.

Exactly. Though I guess in the rules of this universe it's not a paradox if time isn't linear...

OH! Another thought-the whole idea of language unlocking your brain and changing how you see the world reminded me heavily of "Stranger in a Strange Land", since the whole idea there was that the Martian language allowed you to understand the world on a level far deeper than any human language could, and that led to all sorts of abilities.

[AimingforYoko]

6 hours ago, questionfear said:

Exactly. Though I guess in the rules of this universe it's not a paradox if time isn't linear...

And they're not actually travelling through time, they're just perceiving time in a non-linear fashion.

Wait a minute, does this mean Quentin Tarantino is an alien? It would explain so much.

[stealinghome]

I just got back from seeing this and wow, this movie is gorgeous. As others have said, the emotion is just so on point--it's subtle, but the way it builds and builds and builds is just immense. And its insights into what it means to be human? Just hauntingly beautiful. It's definitely a film that will resonate more and more the older you get. I want to see it again, because it's a film that will reward rewatching, I think...or do I know, because it already happened? Heh.

Amy Adams was excellent and this was definitely her movie start to finish, but let's just say a pair of glasses doesn't make Jeremy Renner a believable genius.

This movie is what a Chris Nolan movie would be if he a) could write women and b) really GOT human emotion. I mean, I'm with all the reviews that say this was cerebral and thinking man's sci-fi, but the core of emotion at this movie was just sublime.

Beautiful.

[fireice13]

I really enjoyed this movie, although, I knew the "twist" going in and I kind of wished I hadn't. I'm definitely going to want to see it again now that I know how it all plays out. I think this is one of those movies where you get more out of it each time you watch it. Since the heptapods could perceive time as non-linear does that mean they knew the outcome would end well? Did Abbott know his/her/it's fate? I did feel sad about that too. I wish they would've fleshed out those soldiers reasoning a bit more or left it as soldiers think attacking is the answer to everything. It seemed like there was logic, however flawed, behind their motives for the bomb but it wasn't explored enough to really make me understand it. I just though they were stupid and were going to ruin all the progress Ian and Louise had made.

[wlk68]

Seeing this again today because it is totally worth a second viewing. And a third. And a fourth.

[cpcathy]

I loved it. We had to sit on the second row due to our local theater has installed the reclining seats, but it was better that way--it felt like we were "in" the settings. Beautifully shot too. Come DVD will be seeing again.

[vibeology]

I saw this Saturday night and I think I'm finally ready to talk about it. I adored it. I loved the visuals and the tension that built up to the first session with the aliens. I was so tense from the moment she walked past the TVs into her classroom until we first saw the heptapods. The pacing and visuals did an amazing job making each moment worse. I loved the look of the aliens and their ship. Actually alien not humans in rubber suits. The ship was so imposing in those first shots with the clouds coming over the mountain and the close-up of the texture was unsettling.

The way Louise and the team entered the ship was so powerful, especially the first time. She was clearly crossing into another space and each step was designed to separate the team in the ship from humanity outside. Putting on the suits, the ride out in the truck, going up on the lift, the gravity tunnel were these well thought out visual steps showing the audience that she was crossing into someplace different, a different world almost like in a fantasy story when the hero crosses into a magical land. Plus the visuals and concept of the gravity tunnel were so well done. The one shot where they were upside down was maybe a little obvious, but very pretty.

The heptapods themselves were marvelous. So disquieting at first but somehow friendly looking in some moments. (I'm thinking specifically of the moment where "Ian Walks" and the heptapod copied.) The design there should be commended for pulling that off. I loved that they sounded like whales at moments and like radio static at others. It was the right mix between something I trust and something that freaks me out. I just loved the balance in creating them and think they are some of the most effective movie aliens ever.

As for the twist, I adored it and what it meant. I figured it out for sure when Hannah was looking for a science term for saying win-win and Louise to ask her father. I was already wondering before that why we were never seeing the dad in the flashbacks so I was primed to pick up on that. As for it's meaning I took it to mean that the moments along the way are the real purpose of life. It isn't really about where you end up but how you get there and that's why Louise has Hannah even knowing the outcome. She gets her daughter and her daughter gets those wonderful moments of love and learning even if her life is cut short. Of course, I do understand why Ian felt (will feel) the way he does about it. Louise clearly had more information and kept something from him and that would feel very unfair.

[wlk68]

Agree with everything Vibeology said. This movie needs to win all the Oscars. Script, score, cinematography, special effects, director, best actress. It's perfection. 

[MisterGlass]

Saw this today.  I agree with the highlights above on Amy Adams's work, and the quiet, emotional core.  The design of the aliens and the visualization of their language was fantastic.  Alien.  The heptapods are the least human intelligent creatures on film that I can recall, right down to the odd number of limbs rather than an even number.

I'm not familiar with the source material, but there are echoes of these concepts in other sci fi works.  I don't think the premise of experiencing nonlinear time requires complete determinism.  Abbott tried to warn Louise about the bomb, which seems like seeing a possibility rather than a certainty.  Louise asked Ian if he could see the future whether he would choose the path he saw, or make changes.  The nearest analogue I can see is in the Dune book series.  Spoiler for Dune Messiah:

Spoiler

In the second book, Paul can see possible futures, some more likely than others, and tries to act to bring about the one that he wants to see.  He experiences a bottleneck in which all actions lead to the same basic moment in time, but after that possibilities widen out again

On 11/15/2016 at 10:28 AM, questionfear said:

OH! Another thought-the whole idea of language unlocking your brain and changing how you see the world reminded me heavily of "Stranger in a Strange Land", since the whole idea there was that the Martian language allowed you to understand the world on a level far deeper than any human language could, and that led to all sorts of abilities.

I thought that as well.  Louise explaining the difficulty of trying to communicate a single sentence reminded me briefly of the "Darmok" episode of ST:TNG.

Even so, this movie took these concepts of communication and really made them its own.

[Wouldofshouldof]

The trailer says something about an unexpected twist at the end.  Prior to seeing the movie I was trying to guess what it could be: She decides to leave with the aliens (not an original twist); the aliens turn out to be humans from the future (not an original twist).  So as soon as she did the voice over at the beginning saying, about her daughter, "I thought the story began with you, but I was wrong" I knew the twist had to involve her daughter somehow.  While I didn't figure it out entirely from the beginning, I was on the right track.  I told my boyfriend that it would have something to do with the girl.  Afterward, he chastised me for spoiling it for him :)

[Ohwell]

I saw this today and it was....ok.  I have to admit though that a lot of the time, I was bored.  Plus, there were too many flashbacks of the little girl, and there was too much of Amy Adams.  I got tired of looking at her upturned nose.

I also didn't understand WTH was going on with Forest Whitaker's accent.  When he first spoke, I could have sworn he sounded British, then throughout the rest of the movie he switched back and forth between what sounded like a Boston accent, and how he normally sounds.  Major fail.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Ohwell
Added comments

[sacrebleu]

Quote

What kind of accent was Forest Whitaker doing, incidentally?  I couldn't place it.

Quote

A review I read claimed it was supposed to be a Brooklyn accent.

Yeah, I guessed New England-- it was bizarre.

I was trying to figure out the twist-- and figured it had to do with the daughter. At first, I thought maybe the kid was part alien, and that's why she died-- but once the aliens' message of "there is no time" was misinterpreted as a threat, I knew that what they meant was, we don't perceive time the way you do-- as linear. That, plus the description of them writing a sentence as knowing where they start and finish-- and I figured it out.

[Ms Blue Jay]

I will definitely read all of the posts later but - I was blown. the fuck. away.

I'm now telling everyone in my immediate family to please catch it in the theatre.

Best movie I've seen this year, but there was really not much of a contest.

I loved it.  If you are on the fence about seeing it in the theatre - please do!

[Silver Raven]

Great acting, but a muddled story.  Amy Adams was perfect in the role.

It does ask the question if whether you would have a child if you knew she would die young.

[Anela]

On November 16, 2016 at 3:43 PM, fireice13 said:

I really enjoyed this movie, although, I knew the "twist" going in and I kind of wished I hadn't. I'm definitely going to want to see it again now that I know how it all plays out. I think this is one of those movies where you get more out of it each time you watch it. Since the heptapods could perceive time as non-linear does that mean they knew the outcome would end well? Did Abbott know his/her/it's fate? I did feel sad about that too. I wish they would've fleshed out those soldiers reasoning a bit more or left it as soldiers think attacking is the answer to everything. It seemed like there was logic, however flawed, behind their motives for the bomb but it wasn't explored enough to really make me understand it. I just though they were stupid and were going to ruin all the progress Ian and Louise had made.

I also wondered if Abbott knew his fate.  :(

I loved the movie, saw I last night - finally.  We tried twice before, and it was always almost full, so my family wouldn't have been able to sit together. 

[Bruinsfan]

Costello fled the bulkhead in time, so I assumed Abbot knew and decided (or resigned himself to the fact) that transmitting Heptapod-B to the earthlings was more important than personal survival.

[Traveller519]

I saw both this and Manchester by the Sea this weekend, so watching story play out through time jumps really did a number on me, but it was great.

This jumped to the top half of my 2016 Top 10 list for sure, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it come out on top. Following Prisoners and Sicario, Villeneuve is generating a style I can really get lost in. It's engrossing.

How refreshing to have an Alien Encounter storyline that doesn't result in war, but plays on the inherent paranoia of such a situation, and looks at the real problem solving that would go into understanding first (public) contact.

[Browncoat]

I finally got to see this last night and it was... fine.  It was pretty and all, but maybe I waited too long to see it.  It was not the bestest movie evah to me, but it was fine.  It probably could have used a little editing here and there, too.

When she realized she was seeing her future child, I kept thinking about Yoda -- "Always in motion is the future."  Meaning, of course, that nothing a clairvoyant sees is set in stone. 

It also put me in mind of Close Encounters, particularly some of the sounds the aliens made.

One other thing -- a booster vaccine doesn't work immediately.  It takes a couple of weeks for your immune system to ramp up antibody production.  So giving Louise and Ian booster shots 20 minutes before they went into the pod probably didn't help much in terms of bacterial exposures.  Not sure what they were talking about later with the potential radiation exposure after she took off her suit.

[ChelseaNH]

In most movies about time travel, you have a linear consciousness with a non-linear experience of time, but that's achieved by moving physically through time.  This was a linear consciousness without linear physical continuity, so the state of consciousness changes independent of bodily experience.  I think she's not going to experience the future moments "again" as time unspools; she has already lived them.

The opening did a good job of setting up the impression that these were past experiences, especially the use of "come back to me."

[Browncoat]

2 hours ago, ChelseaNH said:

 I think she's not going to experience the future moments "again" as time unspools; she has already lived them.

Can you clarify what you mean?  And how that affects those close to her who haven't already lived them?

[ChelseaNH]

We're accustomed to consciousness and time moving in sync.  I think her consciousness is moving independently of time.  She lives time out of sequence.  So the moments we saw, she already lived.  She won't go back to them again.  She'll go to all the moments around them.

Most of the people around her will live through time in the usual way.  The main effect is that her life experience at different points of time will not be what anyone else would expect.  Like at the UN celebration, meeting the Chinese general.  His expectation was that she already knew about their conversation, but she hadn't lived that yet, so she didn't.

[choclatechip45]

I saw this earlier today and that is a really good twist at the end. I now understand why everyone thinks Amy Adams was robbed for not being nominated for best actress.

[Traveller519]

I re-watched Sicario recently, and it has me excited to re-watch this. I feel like there's a lot more I'll pick up on knowing the plot

[Isle Of Why]

On 11/14/2016 at 10:44 AM, Laurie4H said:

I thought it was completely pretentious and lame.

I didn't see it as pretentious but it was very boring to me. I kept looking at the video timer -- only 30 minutes? Only halfway through still? I may never have gotten past the fact that several world-renowned linguists apparently had never considered using pictographs to communicate, or that holding up a white board with "human" written on it provided some kind of breakthrough.

Maybe because I didn't see it in the theater, but I found the cinematography to be really muddy and even darker than usual with movies these days. I came to like Abbott and Costello but never cared about any of the humans.

On 11/12/2016 at 5:53 PM, JessePinkman said:

That said, they got me. I thought she was depressed at the start of the movie because her daughter died but no, she's just kind of a sad sack.

She really was.

[jah1986]

So I finally got around to seeing this over the weekend and I enjoyed it. I think Amy Adams is a really good actress, she always seems to just play her part, no ticks or "tells" she just plays the character and I love that about her. That being said I don't feel like she was robbed of a Best Actress nomination, she was good and the film as good but personally I don't see Oscar worthy, just my opinion.  

I also didn't feel the final act was a big "twist" as soon as I saw her teaching at the University I said to myself she looks younger than when her daughter died, is this a flashback? 

I did appreciate a sci-fi movie where the aliens weren't evil and was more about the human reaction. I thought it was good and would recommend it to others.

[LauraAnders]

I saw The Arrival. But I feel I need to see it again to gain a better appreciation. I really liked her co-star as well. He must be a very versatile actor. Did you see his work in "The Town". He must be a great actor to be able to play two roles as diverse as Jekyl and Hyde.

I love Amy Adams. I'd like to start a thread asking people what their favorite film is in which she starred. For me, it's "Trouble with the Curve". I fell in love with her after seeing that. I know she is married and has a daughter and has been together with her husband since 2001. I cried for days when I learned that. It is the single biggest regret of my life that I will never be able to marry Amy Adams. (I'm just joking about that. But I really do love her movies. She is the best. The very best).

Edited February 22, 2017 by LauraAnders

[adhoc]

Saw it. Mostly bored; thank goodness I was watching at home and could take a break after an hour, since this movie seemed to be going at the pace of your average glacier.

I did not buy the miraculous language breakthrough after a matter of...what...weeks? Months?  And we're not talking "Boy eats apple". We're talking more abstract concepts, like "purpose" and "weapons".  Please.

The "flashbacks" were confusing to me. And selective. How was it that there was not one "flashback" where she sees Ian? I just felt the way her experience of time was portrayed was conveniently inconsistent and deliberately a bit misleading. 

Why were Ian and the Forest Whitaker character there, again? Was there footage of Ian's team at work that was left on the cutting room floor?  

Finally, I could tell by watching that this movie was based on a book. You can be very "internal" in a book, showing us, in a compelling manner, the protagonist's psychological/mental reactions as he/she perceives and interacts with external events and situations.  But stories like that often lose something when translated to a visual medium like the big screen. I have not read the short story on which this is based, but I'd bet that's what happened here.

5/10 for me.

Edited February 24, 2017 by adhoc

[Madding crowd]

I finally saw this last night. After reading several reviews (not here) that the movie "Changed my life" and that people were gasping and sobbing in theaters, I didn't know what to expect. The twist was interesting and the movie was good, but change my life? No. I didn't understand the amazing gift the aliens had to bring humankind. The universal language was cool but at the same time we have the capabilities to immediately translate any language via computer. As far as the gift of knowing time was non-linear, I don't know that this is a gift. The very essence of our experiences in life is a result of not knowing the future. Knowing everything that will happen to you before it does will remove much of the joy and increase much of the sorrow. I had several family members die young, several miscarriages and other things that I would not want to know about. Not because it would change my actions (I would of course want whatever time I could have with loved ones), but because it would taint the time I had with them. Mankind could not survive with the burden of "knowing". I also didn't understand some of the aspects such as not remembering the phone call to China. 

I did think it was shot in a beautiful way, and had unexpected elements. I liked Abbott and Costello. Life Changing? NO, then again I have never walked out of a movie and thought my entire life had changed. 

[ChelseaNH]

On 2/26/2017 at 9:10 AM, Madding crowd said:

we have the capabilities to immediately translate any language via computer

We can translate known human languages via computer.  Computers can only do exactly what they're told to do.  If no one has gone through the process of learning an alien language, then there's no one to tell the computer what to do.