I shouldn't have liked it, but I did.

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2017)

So much going against it, mainly there was not much to it. For a very long time, there's no ticking clock. No tension. No threat.
I went in trying to pay attention because of the mixed reviews and that many said they were confused. I generally wasn't confused although it tried very hard to be such. The "loose" chronology was apparently verified by experts, but was sometimes hard to swallow.
The opening was effective on trying establish sympathy for Amy Adams character. But it took me out of such when she didn't age, although the daughter's life probably covered 15 years, at least. Then, of course, we find out that the birth of the daughter had not happened.
Although I enjoyed Adams performance, it really turned out there was nothing to the character. The supposed sympathy card about the daughter was the cheat and it never happened. Sure, she was a brave scientist, but not much else.
Found it jarring that the arrival and lead up to the meeting of the aliens was slow and methodical but then once they met them, we quickly cut to the post-op of that meeting. The tension and anxiety was evident but then the twisting of gravity (because the ship was tall and thin) was just a device and not really interesting.
And there was not much to the rest of the film, where most of the tension (albeit manufactured) of the piece exists. The soldiers get paranoid. The Chinese get paranoid. Although probably plausible in the real world, I just had a tough time with it in the context of a film.
But the concept was very interesting. Shades of Slaughterhouse 5. I had also seen another very interesting time movie called "Predestination," but had a serious paradox. The paradox questions came up with Arrival. Why was she having dreams about a daughter that she never had? Why was she having visions of a meeting with the Chinese general she never had? But I bought it.
But it dropped the ball on what "gift" the aliens supposedly gave Earth. And was the daughter what would save the aliens in the future?