Great Sci-fi movie overshadowed by better representations

Rating: 7/10 (6 December 2016)

Firstly, great trailer displaying all the exciting clips from the movie, made me want to watch this despite never heard of "The Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang.
Plot: From the beginning the scenes already hinted strong characteristic traits on a sci-fi alien movie. The first half of the movie seems legitimately haunting and frightening. As the movies past it's halfway point you realized it's not focus on exploration technologies, but focus on humanity and how we see ourselves in time. I really like intellectual stories and how it present a deeper message.
Characters: Amy Adams did a fantastic job in this film, she basically carried this movie with her performance as the Dr. Louise Bank as a woman with strong personal "back stories" and reflect them when she was on the mission to interpret languages for the government. I love how her character is sometimes giving "flashbacks" between tasks and the different emotions throughout her progress. Sadly her wonderful performance is the only memorable character in this film, either Jeremy Renner or Forest Whittaker showed strong performance which is understandably due to the nature of the script, but still disappointment.
Effects: Great visual and sound effects, but the cinematography struck me the most. There were a few reoccurring shots usually similar layout and techniques really standout from the other sci-fi movies. There was a wide shot vertically from top to front into frame perfectly focusing on the background objectives and telling stories of the character without any dialogues. I love how the cinematography has a pattern or theme that strongly emphasize some deeper and hidden messages. I will say it is the best thing from this movie and certainly deserve all the praises and awards.
Opinions: Personally I really enjoy this film despite the nature of the plot and ending confuses some younger audience and leave them scratching their heads. I just feel the plot is too multi layered in the second half of the film. I can see it draws resemblance from Contact(one of my all time favourite movie) and Intersteller, but the final payoff comes is not well. The pacing is slow and lack of excitement compare to the ones I mentioned, overall it comes out too artsy to younger viewers with overloaded information and layers, which is unfortunate.
Rating: 7.5. Definitely one of the better Sci-fi film and strong individual performance by Amy Adams, can see it won awards on cinematography and lead actress in the following award season. Unfortunately slightly pale and slow in some areas compare to few recent sci-fi movies with similar structure. Still a recommendation movie.