The answer lies within

Rating: 9/10 (25 February 2017)

I love the way Denis Villeneuve tackles well-worn genres and stands them on their head. Now I expect that everything he does will be exciting and different: "Polytechnique", "Prisoners", "Enemy" and now "Arrival".
I was not so keen on "Sicario"; it didn't quite get over the bar for me – and Villeneuve set the bar. However "Arrival" does, and then some.
Here he has taken on the aliens visiting earth with a message classic, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" – with a touch of old H.G's "War of the Worlds" thrown in, and taken the whole thing to a new level.
It's not just special effects; they're good, but they are not the whole show.
When alien spacecraft arrive at many locations on Earth, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is brought in by the military to try and communicate with them.
The film is absorbing as Louise and a team of scientists slowly interpret the alien's language while also attempting to build trust. All the incidental detail seems pretty much the way you would expect humans to approach an alien arrival with some advocating a peaceful approach and others a preemptive first strike.
What really makes this film hit home is it's emotional depth. Louise has had troubling experiences and these become bound up in her relationship with the aliens.
"Arrival" has that same insightful quality that was at the heart of Zemeckis' "Contact" and Nolan's "Interstellar" and also to a degree in Glazer's "Under the Skin"; they seem to say that the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe is found within oneself.
The sense of spirituality in these films separates them by light years from most special effects laden sci-fi films. Jóhann Jóhannsson's rather impartial score also heightens the atmosphere of "Arrival".
It's probably wrong to pigeonhole "Arrival" as straight science fiction; one feels that Villeneuve and the filmmakers were striving for something far more profound – I think they succeeded.