arrival


 Arrival is a masterpiece. It's a beautiful work of art and I don't think most people understand it. But if you get what it's saying, it'll make you cry.

Amy Adams is wonderful in the lead role. Jeremy Renner is great as her friend and coworker. Forrest Whittaker is his usual strange, smarmy self. The premise is really good - aliens have arrived on Earth. They're in those black things like in the picture above. Humans go into those black things and talk to the aliens. Now, I'm considering my words carefully to keep from giving you spoilers. Tell you what, I'm going to put a paragraph at the bottom that says SPOILERS at the top and you can read it if you want a hint as to what the movie means, though I'm not going to spoil the whole thing for you.

Acting, writing, production quality, everything is perfect. This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. And what it says is so profound that it flew over the heads of many (most?) of the people who watched it.

I HIGHLY recommend it. If you only see twenty movies in your life, make this one of them.

It's PG-13, and I believe that's entirely from language and adult situations. I don't believe there's any nudity or violence.

SPOILER! OK, the only thing I'm gonna tell you down here is that the language that the aliens use to communicate with Amy Adams unlocks her brain so that she can start seeing the future. She sees that her husband is going to leave her and her child is going to die. And she has to make a terrible decision based on that knowledge.

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