Arrival

The previews for Arrival didn't immediately catch my attention as a movie I had to see. I actually thought I wouldn't see it. But today came and I was feeling like going to a movie, and when I checked Fandango it was playing at my theater in thirty minutes.

It was pretty slow moving for the first three-fourths of the film, and I was unsure if it was going to go anywhere. However, it then picked up some steam and I was decently enthralled. I enjoyed the importance language played in the film. That there is distinction in language about the meaning of words. Louise (Amy Adams) gets that and takes her time creating a base of understanding with the aliens to avoid war. Words, and their meanings and intent, matter.

The movie is not the normal sci-fi/alien movie. Independence Day it is not. As I was watching, I kept thinking of the Jodie Foster film Contact. In that, Foster plays a scientist who discovers that aliens are communicating with Earth. There's some controversy if she should be the one to meet them with the contraption they build - she's an atheist and the "people in charge" believe a person "of faith" should be the one to meet the aliens. It made for a cerebral rather than action-packed sci-fi film, and Arrival is like that, too.