I expected a lot and got more

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2016)

The trailer for Arrival led me to expect a humans-meet-aliens-and- some-people-misunderstand-their-benevolence movie like Contact. I was expecting deep human drama in the face of "the other" and a well- acted, well-shot movie. I got those things, they were delivered well.
What I wasn't expecting was the twist. What does one expect when humans meet alien visitors: 1. they turn out to be hostile and war breaks out (e.g., Independence Day), 2. they turn out to be friendly we have a common enemy (e.g. Transformers), 3. They turn out to be benign or benevolent and we get along (e.g., the Star Trek movie with first contact with the Vulcans). 4. They aliens are neither good or bad but the humans are bad to them (e.g., Alien Nation, or District 9). Without an explicit spoiler, Arrival is closest to "3", while not being like any other alien contact movie I've ever seen. It's hard to have a genuinely new angle and new twist, but there is one for this genre. I absolutely love this movie, even if it did leave me with tears streaming from my eyes for the last 5 minutes.