Arrival

Director Denis Villenueve's multiple Oscar-nominated (including Best Picture) film is an exciting, provocative, intellectually stimulating sci-fi thriller that combines the wonderment of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey with Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind in a tale about Earth's first contact with an alien civilization. When 12 mysterious spacecraft appear around the globe, renowned linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is summoned to decipher their intentions. Still mourning the death of her young daughter, Louise embarks on a mind-bending adventure that takes her to the nearest landing site in Montana, where she's joined by theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). While they evaluate the unnervingly dark, 1,500-ft. high, ovoid spaceship, panic ensues as foreign governments attempt their own extraterrestrial first contact (China and Russia are particularly aggrieved). Aboard the vessel, the pair must adjust to minimal gravity, ascending to a chamber where Louise tries to communicate with its otherworldly inhabitants: immense squid-like creatures—called heptapods—that hover behind a transparent, protective barrier. And she notices that their clicking, whale-like sounds don't correlate with their ideograms—squishy, enigmatic calligraphy that resembles Rorschach ink blobs. An excellent tale centering on how language determines one's perceptions, this excellent adaptation of Ted Chiang's cerebral 1998 short story “Story of Your Life” serves up an enlightening and inspiring allegory. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. [Note: Blu-ray extras include production featurettes on “Xenolinguistics” (30 min.), “Principles of Time, Memory & Language” (16 min.), “Acoustic Signatures: The Sound Design” (14 min.), “Eternal Recurrence: The Score” (12 min.), and “Nonlinear Thinking: The Editorial Process” (11 min.), as well as a bonus UltraViolet copy of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this multiple-Oscar nominee.] (S. Granger)