Reflection inducing, but screenplay and science are weak.

Rating: 7/10 (5 February 2017)

Checking first 4 or 5 pages with reviews I've only found ones with a rating of 9 or 10 and 5 or below. That's ambivalent..
I've rated the movie with a 7, because of it's reflection inducing values, very nice special effects, not bad music and acting. But the screenplay and directing are this movies weak sides. The scriptwriter is supposed to make sure everything makes sense, is reliable, logical and error free. A director is responsible for controlling all of that and suggesting some changes for the better, but they both failed completely.
The first problem is the incoherence between the suggested high level of intelligence and development of the alien race and what we see in the script. The aliens arrive, but they're like children - unprepared, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to communicate, with no initiative. Humans which are supposed to be a less developed race have to teach them communication, just like dealing with some autistic children. Of course it even takes time before they start to understand the difference between "human" and an individual name.
From the other side we have humans which choose just two people - one quite random scientist, who's in the middle of his 40s instead of some experienced expert and one linguist. No one else is needed. Well, they theoretically have some "teams", but obviously these teams don't do anything at all. And this best linguist also doesn't know how to start a conversation. She even teaches in school, but she can't figure out that it might be a good idea to for example link images with words to teach these aliens instead of writing them words and trying to explain what you mean by chaotic other words and gestures. It's good these aliens are at least available to see, which really isn't that obvious.
The aliens can open the hatch only once per 18 hours even though they possess an advanced technology and it seems the area where they stand is sealed, so there's no real reason for this interval.
The aliens have chosen to land on 12 different locations even though their aim was to simply transfer their language thus allowing humans (or some of them) to perceive time differently which is supposed to help them and earn their help in the future, but hey.. why did they needed to land on these 12 locations instead of one? There's no answer for this. The same as why can't they help themselves if they have 3 thousand years for that? Are humans more capable of developing some helping skills during this time than they are? Doesn't seem to have sense.
Then we have the political motive. We can see China and Russia as these primitives who can't be patient enough to conduct any peace talks, but want to use force since practically the beginning. And I could even agree with that a bit, because in general the more liberal and democratic a society is, the more likely it is to use peaceful and rational approach and the more autocratic and conservative a society is the more likely it is to use violence and coercion to solve it's problems. But still it's quite "propagandish".
And they don't even have the The whole parenthood motive is very weak and seems to be added just for inducing people's emotions and thus making the movie's rating better. And does this scientist guy really seem like a person who abandons his family "only" because he knows that his daughter will die in the future?
But the worst of all is this destiny motive. The movie clearly indicated that you cannot change your future, regardless of whether you know it or not. Destiny can be somewhat understood as long as you don't assume you know your future, because hey.. from the future perspective everything you've done in your past could only go one way. Life is not a PC game, where you can make a save, then try out a couple of future outcomes and go on with the most preferred. But it gets complicated once you assume you know the future. The theory that you would still be incapable of changing it is one of the most laughable science assumptions. The aliens can't prevent their future problems, the min character can't choose to have a healthy child by prenatal diagnosis.. hell, these highly developed aliens don't even have a prescription for cell regeneration (and thus preventing aging and most of the diseases) even though scientists all agree that it should easily be achievable to crack it before one millennium, maybe in few centuries. If it's written in their bubble-language that ten years from now you will choose to go right at the crossroads, you'll have to go right even if you'll know it and you'd prefer to go left. It reduces life to a massive puppet show.
Okay, there was more I noticed during the watching session, but now it's all I remember. It's definitely very far away from a "sci-fi masterpiece" some call it (I really pity for their lack of analytical thinking and scientific knowledge), but from the other side it's not as bad as some no-life haters say and it should be able to induce some more thoughts than usual in most of the viewers, which is good.