Westside Steve Posted December 10, 2016 Report Share Posted December 10, 2016 Arrival Paramount PG 13 118 min I was a theater major in college but my minors or secondary Ed and speech.and the linguistics portion is some interesting stuff, I think that was also JRR Tolkien's specialty and that's the hook of the new science fiction flick ARRIVALS. From Klaatu to Frankenstein's monster to the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man to the dirty joke whose punchline is death by N'Gowa, misunderstanding has been at the bottom of a lot of conflict over the years. Anyhow unless I'm completely mistaken the entire idea of ARRIVAL it's a morality play and a ham-handed sermon about communicating with each other. No idea if it was just a coincidence that it comes out right at election time or not. I'm sure that's a possibility yet knowing how many years these things take from the drawing board to the Silver Screen nobody would have known who the two combatants oh, whoops sorry I mean candidates, we're going to be. So here we go. Aliens are once more here on Earth. There are a bunch of them in there weird spaceships all scattered across different locations over the planet. The big deal seems to be figuring out just what the heck they are here for. You see whatever their form of language might be is completely different than ours. Now even though we have some of America's top scientists trying to figure out this dilemma it appears the person with the best chance is dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) a Linguistics expert who might just be able to figure out what these aliens (who look like a cross between a cypress tree and an octopus) might have in mind. Are they here to conquer the planet? Just to say hello? Just stopped to use the restroom? Who knows. So here is where the morality lesson starts to get just a tad bit cloying. At first all the nations have got a pretty good system going and are happily communicating with each other and sharing information. Then some of the key players start getting a little nasty about it and can only think in terms of blowing the shit out of them instead of peaceful soul searching negotiations. To let you know the producers idea of good guys and bad guys the countries that want to get rough and non cooperative are the Russkies, the Chi coms and everybody's pal the Sudan. Here in the USA of course it's the military, and Colonel Weber (Forrester Whitaker) fouling things up and nearly ruining all the progress that dr. Banks has made. Speaking of the good doctor, for some reason the film keeps flashing back to her daughter, who apparently died of cancer and her ex-husband who is now the scientist working on the same project with her. Awkward? Not as awkward as trying to figure out why the flashbacks come and go as they do. Soon enough you will find out. It only seems like a long long time because the movie is horrendously dull and crawls along at a snail's pace. Somehow during this plodding the team figures out almost before it's too late what it is the aliens are trying to communicate. Unfortunately it's not that exciting or even interesting, but I will let you find out for yourselves. As always you might like it a lot better than I did. C WSS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoyceRolls Posted December 18, 2016 Report Share Posted December 18, 2016 I did enjoy it a bit more than you did, I'd probably give it a B+. You make some good points, but my interest was piqued for the majority of the film. The way they treated the over-hashed concept of alien invasion was refreshing as well. You are spot on about the reason the aliens came to earth in the first place, which seemed like a cop out, but I enjoyed the mystery of it all nonetheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westside Steve Posted December 18, 2016 Author Report Share Posted December 18, 2016 I did enjoy it a bit more than you did, I'd probably give it a B+. You make some good points, but my interest was piqued for the majority of the film. The way they treated the over-hashed concept of alien invasion was refreshing as well. You are spot on about the reason the aliens came to earth in the first place, which seemed like a cop out, but I enjoyed the mystery of it all nonetheless. It seems like I am in a minority compared to other critics too so there you go... That's the thing, there is no right or wrong. WSS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Gipper Posted March 14, 2017 Report Share Posted March 14, 2017 I saw this last night on video, and yes I think you are spot on Steve. For a while it seemed that this could be interesting with the language thing (as you may know my son started out thinking he would major in linguistics before turning to biology). But in the end both my wife and I agree that it basically turned into pretty much a pretentious snoozefest. Just a bunch of squids spurting out their ink stains. The "weapon" or tool that the aliens want to give Earth seemed to have no application to anyone at all other than the Amy Adams character. Of course Sci-Fi has its history of long pretentious movies. While it was cool when a generation wondered what 2001 A Space Odyssey was about....those hidden meanings in a story these days seem to me now to just be cop outs for writers who can't figure out what their story is supposed to be about. While this was not quite as boring as Interstellar, it does not rate that high on my overall Sci Fi movie list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westside Steve Posted March 14, 2017 Author Report Share Posted March 14, 2017 Yeah 2001 was basically cool because the first time we saw those amazing effects. Now that anybody with a laptop can recreate them it loses a little bit. And Interstellar was light years ahead of Arrival as far as the boredom Factor. WSS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPPT1974 Posted March 15, 2017 Report Share Posted March 15, 2017 It was a good movie. As really love Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams and Forest Whitaker. Such an all star cast there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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