A good'ish SCI-FI movie, was a bit disappointed.

Rating: 8/10 (10 February 2017)

I really like Denis Villeneuve as an director and he has done some movies I loved: Prisoners, Enemy. So I was really hyped to see him direct a serious sci-fi movie, but I was a bit disappointed with the end product.
SPOILERS!!!!
Positives:
The acting by the two main leads were really good. Amy Adams is always great and I was surprised how good Jeremy Renner was. It's a really well shot movie with striking visuals (one poor cgi shot) and images that won't at least leave my head in a while. Soundtrack was also really good.
Negatives: "How about we just talk to them before we start throwing math problems at them?" When I heard that line in the first act of the movie I was like OH NO! That's precisely what you should do when you are trying to communicate with an alien civilization. Use a common language: MATH! Start with the prime numbers and build from there. Use simple calculus with pictures: one line plus one line equals 2 lines. But that's just my personal gripe with the movie, but it buggered me so much because I was expecting a hard science fiction movie.
The 2nd biggest problem I had was the stereotypical military guys who are just basically shoot first think later type's and are unwilling to listen reason. "Let's not communicate with the other landing sites","Radio silence!","Let's not share our information because nobody shares theirs!" Like WTF?! are these people in kindergarten or what?
Overall Arrival is an enjoyable watch with your typical Hollywood contrivance that left me wanting something more serious on the science front.