Not quite the masterpiece I expected

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2017)

I'm all for "thinking mans sci-fi", it's actually probably one of my favorite genres. I love Cube, Moon, 2001, Gattaca, Children of Men, Contact, Ex Machina was absolutely wonderful. There are many fine "real" scifi movies, but Arrival just didn't hit home for me.
Looks great, acting is pretty good, soundtrack OK. The idea is kind of OK in general, but the first real problem for me was that I kept thinking (no pun intended) that why would the aliens have spoken and written language to begin with. Why assume aliens would have that much in common with us. Like they used to paint actors green to distinguish them from humans and make them alien. I kind of needed more than decoding different style of writing.
Acting like said is pretty good, but like has been said in other reviews, everyone except for Amy Adams' are very thin characters. Renner shows promise, but it's a shame his character is so under developed, especially due to the ending "twist" of the movie. There's no revelation there, just a somewhat predictable twist, but with more in the script for Renner, it might've been better.
I have to admit even I felt this movie was a bit boring at times. I kept looking at the watch and thinking now would be a good time to thrust the script, and often it did find a new twist to it, but it never really gets very interesting.
I don't know, it didn't work for me at least in the first viewing. The part with social chaos, soldiers vs personal growth, how we perceive time etc didn't feel at balance. I may need to watch it again to see what the fuzz is about. I actually liked Enemy (2013) a lot more by Villeneuve, haven't seen anything else by him. Looking forward to new Bladerunner tho.