'Arrival' is a Conceptually Ambitious and Technically Sound Sci-Fi Story

Early film festival screenings of Arrival generated a lot of positive buzz for director Denis Villeneuve’s latest picture in the months leading up to its release, making it one of the more highly anticipated movies of the year. This, of course, led to some pretty sizable expectations; Plenty of people will go into this movie expecting something great and, for the most part, they will not be disappointed.

The central conflict of the movie is fairly straightforward; When twelve gargantuan alien spaceships land throughout the globe, several teams of experts are gathered to make contact with the beings inside of them. Arrival mostly focuses on the American team, led by linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). These twelve teams must work together to find a way to communicate with the aliens and find out the reason behind their presence on Earth.

Amy Adams delivers one of the best performances of her career as Louise, and that's saying something. She’s the emotional center of the film, and she carries this weight in a very understated fashion. Everything that the viewers experience is seen from Louise’s point of view, and a lesser actress could have been too over the top to be believable as this character. In a movie that almost entirely hinges on the viewer relating to the Louise’s mental goings-on, that would’ve been catastrophic. The supporting cast is adequate, lacking any other real standouts, but also comfortably without any unbelievable performances that would take one out of the story.

Arrival also deserves a good amount of praise for its technical aspects. The directing literally places the viewer inside the head of Louise, and this is complimented by some truly incredible cinematography resulting in visuals that tell the story as much as the script does. The shots in which we see Louise enter both the military lab and the spaceship for the first time show how anxious and overwhelmed she is during those scenes being a standout example.

The production design also deserves to be lauded, with the incredible design of the aliens, their spaceships, and their language never feeling campy. Much like the directing and cinematography, these elements all help tell a story through the visuals only; This is a movie that one could watch on mute and still enjoy. Watching it without sound, though, would deprive viewers of experiencing the score and sound design, both of which are top notch as well. On a technical level, Arrival passes with flying colors.

The film, however, is not without flaws. There is a storytelling device (the explanation of which would spoil crucial plot points) that the movie goes to way too often, resulting in a slow pace at time and choppy storytelling at others. Even though that device conceptually fit the film and sets up the big reveal in the climax, the execution of it was a bit shoddy, hurting the overall flow of the film. Pacing is the movie’s biggest issue, with certain parts of the second act and the resolution of the movie unfolding too slowly.

There are also some issues with characterization, as Jeremy Renner, whose Marvel Cinematic Universe character Hawkeye is often mocked for being there without any real purpose, gets the same treatment in this movie. His character is underdeveloped and is almost extraneous to the plot except for the one moment when he figures something out on his own. Renner does a solid job with the hand he’s dealt, but the script does not really give him much to do.

Still, Arrival is overall an extremely original, conceptually ambitious film that is definitely worth seeing. There will be some bumps, but this superbly crafted sci-fi drama is ultimately a technical masterpiece with a world-class performance at its heart.

Watch the new official movie trailer for Arrival. Coming to theatres November 11, 2016. When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - is brought together to investigate.

Drug War Epic 'Sicario' Is Gripping and Intense Filmmaking

Since making the translation to English-language films, director Denis Villeneuve dropped one of the most viscerally gripping crime films of the past few years with Prisoners and one of the most thought-provoking thrillers starring a Hollywood actor with Enemy. And with his latest, Sicario, Villeneuve brings his excellent grasp of cerebral tension to a very timely drama about the Mexican Drug War. Reuniting with the incomparable Roger Deakins as his cinematographer, Villeneuve tries to dig deep into a struggle that has defined a region for decades now.

Sicario manages a very rare thing in Hollywood in that it happens to be a movie completely of its time. The conflict being portrayed is still very much happening and is still taking lives on both sides of the border. Even though most Americans aren't truly aware of the day-to-day skirmishes, the cartels and the agencies of both governments are still fighting for control.

Our window as an audience into this frankly terrifying new world is Special Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), newly assigned to a Department of Defense task force to take down some high-level cartel members. But the more she works towards making things right the more she begins to realize that she may be in over her head and nothing is as black and white as she thought.

But if Kate is our protagonist and supposed to be the audience's viewpoint into this unfamiliar world, she is interestingly kept at arm's length from most of the film's action. She is always shown to be at a distance or just out of earshot when her superiors are discussing operations or explaining tactics. Therefore she's kept in the dark and so are we as viewers. It’s more than a little intimidating for both audience and character because if we are kept in the dark, that means we have no idea of the potential danger that lies ahead.

This is the film's way of carefully doling out information piece by piece, and the more that Kate tries to pry into what’s really happening, the more horrified she is to learn of the implications of it all. Josh Brolin plays up his bravado as the DoD man Matt Graver who reluctantly yet unabashedly reveals to Kate and the audience that their view of morality is simply nonexistent in this underworld. And that gray morality comes into full view with Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro Gillick, in a role that has to be a frontrunner for this year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Del Toro is mysteriously aloof for the first hour in the middle of so much mayhem but as the action escalates his portrayal of menace and determination was an absolute revelation.

Boasting setpiece after intense setpiece, the realizations come very slowly and the tension builds to a fever pitch with another wallop of an ending from Villeneuve. It will have you gripping your seat from start to fantastic finish.

But the most important thing is the film doesn't offer any easy answers because there simply aren't any. Morality is a mess of grays; "good guys" and "bad guys" simply don't exist in this universe. Families are torn apart every day by this drug war, and Sicario acknowledges that we are near helpless to stop it as innocent bystanders, as the gut-punch ending makes very clear.

Boosted by a tight script from Taylor Sheridan, a searingly intense score from composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, some absolutely beautiful shots from Roger Deakins(the shot where the assault team disappears under the Mexican horizon as if they are descending into hell is one of the year’s best) and some truly Oscar-worthy performances especially from Benicio del Toro, Sicario is yet another overwhelming experience from Denis Villeneuve and one of the year’s must-see films.