A little sadder. A little wiser.

Rating: 10/10 (14 November 2016)

What would happen if you took a film like Contact, deconstruct it into the most archetypal questions that we face as humans, and then piece them together in a style that rivals the iconic cinematic mastermind of Stanley Kubrick? Add an actress who has never before been given the chance to show physical fear, the devastation of loss and the gut wrenching, gall drenched intensity of motherhood. Add imagery of possibly the most cerebral effort ever to portray extraterrestrial life, very cleverly delayed so that when you finally get to see them, your hairs stand up as they would when a growling lion walked into your bedroom. Add a soundtrack that is in a word primal. I kid you not. It sounds like it's been accidentally stumbled upon from a godly source. It blends perfectly with the sounds already produced by the alien life, and it is beautiful. It is beautiful! It bloody made me cry. It is thick and heavy like Wagner in places, and unearthly and hellish as Ligeti, and it spoke to me and fried the marrow in my shuddering spine. Then, take a surprisingly tricky theory from the mind of Jacques Lacan, create a fascinating linguistically sound writing system, and build a non-linear plot around that. And then show that to unsuspecting audiences across the globe, and make them walk out a little changed from when they walked in. A little sadder. A little wiser. A movie has crashed into my number one spot previously held by Iñárritu's Biutiful and has broken all previous records in my mind. I welcome 'Arrival' into my life.