Sunday 18 December 2016

Film No. 72 (2016) Arrival November 27th.

Film No. 72 (2016) November 27th.  12.30 PM READING CINEMAS, Queenstown New Zealand.


"You are at the top of everyones list when it comes to translations" (Colonel Weber (Forrest Whitaker) addresses Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) as unidentified craft appear on Earth.







Amy Adams is the flavour of this cinema year it would seem. She certainly has a charismatic quality which endears her to the screen. Arrival will likely earn her many a nomination over the coming awards season. So what is it about Arrival, the movie?


With all that has gone down politically in the U.S. over recent months this is a timely film. A film to drag us up by our moral lapels, so that we might be shaken into the realisation that if it's possible to communicate with alien life, then why the hell can't we make positive contact as humans in our global village? Does it work? Yeh it does, surprisingly, because if one had 30 seconds to pitch this plot, corny maybe the concluding verdict.  


I'm doing Arrival a disservice by suggesting the film is a blueprint for the global benefits of effective communication channels. It's most endearing quality is the thread of life, and the premise, if one knew the future, would you make a decision knowing the pain as well as the beauty of what was to come. Still sounding corny? Well Arrival has a corny premise and farfetched threads but it works.


Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a world renowned linguist who is co-opted by the U.S. govt. to make contact with "visitors" who have suddenly arrived and are literally hovering in different positions all over the world. She teams with Donnelly (Jeremy Rimmer) to peel back the layers of a coded exchange between beings. While the film is both subtle and clever, I'm not convinced there is real chemistry between Adams and Rimmer during their key moments as Earth's ambassadors. You see, the film demands chemistry, for me it doesn't deliver on that front but delivers everywhere else. 9GUMS. 

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