Arrival Review: Alien-Invasion Movie Is This Generations Close Encounters

Amy Adams is a miracle worker of an actress she makes us believe in whoever and whatever shes playing. In Arrival, a mesmerizing mindbender directed with searching mind and heart by the Quebec-born Denis Villeneuve, Adams plays a woman who talks to aliens. Or at least she wants to, desperately. Shes not crazy; shes Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics prof who gets called in by the U.S. military, in the person of Forest Whitakers army colonel, to make contact with the creatures whose oval spaceships hover overhead in rural Montana. They are also vessels in 11 others places in different parts of the world, including a not-so-peace-loving China. But Louise sticks to Big Sky country.

Early reviews cite the films deep-dish philosophical underpinnings, possibly because these E.T.s are less like the nasty invaders in Spielbergs War of the Worlds and more like the kindly, curious bunch in the masters Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you know Villeneuves work in Sicario, and Prisoners, you know how he draws viewers in slowly and inexorably. Its the same here. Based on Ted Chiangs 1998 novella Story of Your Life, the script by Eric Heisserer finds Louise and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (smartly underplayed by Jeremy Renner) enlisted to find out the intentions of these heptapods, so named for their seven long tentacles.

Its hard not to be spellbound, along with our heroes when they enter the gravity-free spacecraft and attempt to interact with these visitors from behind a glass wall. The aliens make sounds like the keening of whales, but when Louise holds up an English word they respond with circular ink splotches, which dont seem to suggest the need for world domination or anal probes. Whew! Louise and Ian nickname the two heptapods Abbott and Costello. The humor is a nice touch, but Arrival is hunting bigger game about how we humans deal with anything alien, anything we fear. Kudos to cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma, A Most Violent Year) for making the unknown a believably living presence. And when the alien ink blots seem to spell out the word for weapon, the war-machine goes into high gear.

The Top 20 Sci-Fi Films of the 21st CenturyOscars 2020 Nominations: 12 Biggest Snubs10 Best Country Music Videos of 2019

Interspersed with the threats of global invasion is the story of a daughter Louise loved and lost, much like what Sandra Bullocks character experienced in Gravity. In lesser hands, the personal tale could have seemed extraneous or even silly. But Adams and Villeneuve make it work beautifully. This suggestion of a shared heartbeat between species is reflected in the haunting score by Jhann Jhannsson. Though action fanboys might get antsy about the films contemplative pace, patience pays off in a curve-throwing ending that fills you with a sense a wonder, not to mention shock and awe. Adams, her face a reflection of conflicting emotions, is simply stellar in an Oscar-buzzed performance of amazing grit and grace. Without her, Arrival might be too cerebral to warm up to. With her, the film gets inside your head and emerges as something intimate and epic, a linguistics odyssey through space and time. Its the stuff that dreams are made of.