A near flawless old fashioned sci fi movie with smarts

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2016)

Arrival plays on our fears, V-style, as 12 incredible ships descend over Earth with no warning. Riots and political instability soon ensue, especially when the general public gets their first look at the aliens, who are Lovecraftian nightmares of tentacles, standing 50 feet tall and bellowing like whales.
Initial agreements for world scientists to work together soon give way to distrust as hints emerge the aliens want us to fight each other to the death, for whatever purpose (sport?) they might derive. Soon traditional cold war power blocks circle the wagons and we are approaching WWIII.
Flying in to the rescue in true Deus ex Machina style comes our heroine, a wildly implausible yet instantly lovable red head linguist who can predict the future. The aliens teach her how to harness and control her clairvoyance, and the day is saved.
Some minor quibbles. Yes this is a 'smart' sci fi movie. This is the Deep Impact version of V, rather than Apocalypse. However, the movie does not delve nearly deep enough into the subject of scientific understanding of alien communications, which they have been studying and theorizing on how to do since the 50's. Witness the Voyager and Pioneer messages, for example. Instead, dummy linguist starts the conversation with 'hello, I'm a HUMAN'. Rather dumbed down. The math wiz in the room, instead of trying PI or the atomic symbol for hydrogen, or perhaps showing a human DNA sequence, just stands there rubbing his head. This movie could have been on scientific par with CONTACT, but they went dumb, I guess to appeal to a wider audience. Another quibble is that the linguist frequently lies about world history, at one point blaming the Germans for Rwanda (it was the FRENCH....) which I'm sure the Germans are quite annoyed by. She also invents a parable to convince the General about the pitfalls of communication, when there are NUMEROUS examples from her studies she could have quoted (the discoverer of CANADA for example named the country when asking the natives 'what is this place' meaning the whole country. The natives replied, 'KANADA' which means, 'this is our village').
Finally, this is an intellectual time travel movie, yes, please groan away. It was interesting for sure, but really drags in points. Some limited military actions and perhaps some limited demonstrations of anger from the aliens might have been much more exciting, and still fit within the plot.