Pretty Good

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2016)

Arrival is a well filmed, interesting, and thrilling movie that's ending is a tad too confusing. Arrival follows a young, and attractive, language professor, Amy Adams, who has recently lost her daughter. Shortly after her daughters death she's recruited by the army to translate the language of some squid like aliens that recently landed on earth. The aliens have landed all across the world and each country is trying to understand what the strange creatures are trying to tell us. After a few hard days of work, Amy starts making some real progress but the other countries believe the aliens are trying to give them a weapon to kill their enemies. Fear of a weapon causes all of the countries to stop communicating their findings to the other countries. Fear and panic spreads across the globe about this "weapon" the aliens speak of but Amy thinks they meant something else.*!*!*!(Spoiler, look ahead for the spoiler over message)*!*!*! After visiting the aliens one last time to speak, she finds out that the weapon is their language. After one learns to speak it, time isn't linear. She uses this knowledge to go into the future where she has saved the day. In the future sequence, the Chinese commander thanks Amy for calling him right before he nuked the aliens by calling his private number and telling him his wife's dying words. He then proceeds to tell Amy this information. Amy now is back in present day and calls up the Chinese commander and tells him his wife's dying words *!*!*! (Spoiler over)*!*!*!. While movies like Inception or Shutter Island have semi confusing endings that make you think. Arrivals ending seems silly and confusing just for the sake of being confusing. Besides a semi poor ending, Arrival has great CGI and cinematography. The aliens and their ships are massive and creepy yet interesting. The camera is usually focused on Amy while blurring out the background to show that the alien's language is always on her mind and she is always thinking about it, rarely caring about what's going on. Overall, Arrival is an enjoyable movie that's well shot, has an attractive protagonist, a bad ending, and cool CGI. It won't win any awards but I would definitely suggest watching