Rare: quality science fiction actually makes it on screen

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2017)

It is SO GREAT when real, quality science fiction actually makes it on screen. It is SUCH a rare thing. This movie is great. If you read - in particular - quality, modern short science fiction, then this movie matches the best that you can take away from that experience. I've heard science fiction described as: taking one or a few ideas in science, extrapolating them, requiring some suspension of disbelief from the reader as those ideas are explored in a novel. This actually goes beyond that, but in a very good way. The aliens are clearly so advanced as to put us in the place of ants in comparison. Their science and technologies are relative magic to us. (Something Arthur C. Clarke would appreciate.) But it's not cheesy magic: it's wonder, yet believable. Along the lines of the wonder everyone must admit to when faced with the question of: how is an unbelievably complex consciousness - which seemingly has no explanation other than a metaphysical one - how is that connected to the mundane physical flesh and gore of billions of neurons in a brain. And without spoiling anything, the talk of time and faster than light travel (or not...) turns into a conclusion here that DOES require a good helping of "suspension of disbelief", but: the movie earns it. Plus - the cinematography, special effects, acting, sound, music: all terrific, and all fit together into a beautiful whole. What a pleasure to watch...