Best hard scifi since "Moon"

Rating: 8/10 (6 March 2017)

PwC's Abbott and Costello routine with the Academy Award Best Picture envelopes should have been used as an opportunity to have a rethink. "La La Land" despite it's 6 (or was it 7?) wins was certainly not as good either this film or "Hidden Figures". "Arrival" is more the narrative sister of "Hidden Figures" than it is "Contact" to which it has been extensively compared. First, it does not share the disastrous Deux Ex Machina second act of the Jodie Foster vehicle, instead of using a "Pulp Fiction"-esque nonlinear structure to present a tight narrative from start to finish. Second, the science shares co-pilot duties with philosophy throughout "Arrival" while "Contact" eventually devolves into an "I am your father" search for identity and failure of the movie to dance with the rationality that brought it. The invited cast to this dance acquits themselves well throughout the proceedings although theoretic physicists don't generally look like Jemery Renner. Amy Adams' doughty-named Louise is reflected in her own look somewhat past the spring of her days in knockoff Rom Coms such as the formulaic "Leap Day". The story very much is not a knockoff reflecting vital current issues in scientific thinking including the limits language imposes on thinking and implied limits on the human mind. Having said that the original 1998 publication date means we don't see the application of artificial intelligence that would certainly have been brought to bear should the alien visits have occurred in 2017. The story also gifts college film studies' professors with fertile discussion questions for their classes. It also reinforces the principle that all great movies have a great question at their core. The visuals, while very serviceable, are not quite at the same level of greatness as the questions raised in the script. The heptapoid aliens Abbott and Costello look more like forearms and hands thrust down from the top of the screen into a fish tank in need a cleaning. The alien ships they inhabit look more like one of those brown nuts you need a metallic nutcracker to open and our limited view within the ship is a square hallway which more like an especially deep storage unit than anything else. One wonders expects the giant hand creatures reach down and wipe it with a Clorox clean-up wipe after the humans leave for the day. In short, while not visually arresting, "Arrival" is a smart, taught story which asks much of its audience and potentially was the best film of 2016.