Comes and goes

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2016)

Full of good things, and enjoyable and intriguing to watch, this is ultimately a masquerade of a picture, superficially offering science-fiction while increasingly claiming to be about something more profound. It doesn't really make the transition effectively, and has more than a whiff of M. Night Shyamalan about it, with its climactic twist.
The good things are Amy Adams, who carries all the movie's emotional content on her shoulders as linguist Louise Banks; the cinematography, which is full of interesting colours and contrasts; and the music, a kind of follow-up by Jóhann Jóhannsson to his score for SICARIO for the same director.
Jeremy Renner's role is notable for being the eye-candy, very much hanging behind Ms Adams as Ms Banks, in a welcome reversal of the Hollywood norm.
It's well-crafted, but once you've left the cinema, it's as if it never happened.