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Rating: 4/10 (24 December 2016)

There were things about this film that I liked. It is a very well made, good looking film, filled with good performances, and I like some of the themes it touches upon (time is not linear, it's circular. The question of if you had knowledge of what will happen in the future, would that affect your decisions in the current time? If Adams' character knew she would one day have a daughter who would die of cancer at a young age, would she still have her? Etc.)
But that being said, this is one of those movies that if I was watching this at home, I wouldn't have watched the entire film.
The plot is about a dozen spacecraft, which hover mere feet above various locations on earth, and attempt communication. Obviously, a translator is needed, and a majority of the film deals with their attempts to decrypt and decipher the aliens' circular language. Being a linguist myself, I found these sequences to be most interesting, as we approach their language as we would any other (German, French, Sarikol Tajik) while Amy Adams has what initially appear (to the audience) to be flashbacks, which are later shown to be flash-forwards, to her relationship, and daughter, and her daughter's cancer- related death at a young age, as Adams debates with herself if it's worth it to have a child, knowing what the child's sad fate will be. The ending seems to imply that she does decide to begin that series of events leading to her daughter, and her daughter's death, in a most selfish way. Apparently, I missed the deep, and meaningful message a lot of others got from this one.
The aliens seemed merely like plot contrivances, like the plot wouldn't have been much different, and the point would have still been the same, if they hadn't been there, and considering the fact they are on earth for 25 days without provoking any type of conflict, it made it obvious to me that they mean no harm, there was no plot to take over the planet, and made it obvious to me that we were in for a generic "message" movie, which is exactly what we get. That, and an absolutely deafening score. I'm not exaggerating, the ringing in my ears (from tinnitus) was noticeably worse when I left the film, that it was before. Speaking of leaving, this movie is two hours long, and in the final thirty minutes, I couldn't wait to leave. My mind was wandering, I was tuning in and out, I really just wanted to leave. This movie is not for me. I couldn't care about the obvious plot, or any of the characters. Quite frankly, the movie just bored me.
After the film finally ended, an acquaintance who, unbeknownst to me was also in there for the same showing, walked up to me and began talking to me about the film, and he didn't like it either.