Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forrest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg. Written by Eric Heisserer and directed by Denis Villeneuve. $47 million dollar budget. 116 minutes long. Cert 12.
Typical. Just like buses, you wait ages for an Amy Adams movie and two turn up in the same week!
This is an extraordinary gripping, moving and thoughtful movie about first contact between mankind and an utterly alien life-form.
The film starts with cunning linguist Louise Banks, Amy Adams, thinking back about the birth, and all too short life and death of her daughter due to cancer before she's recruited by US Army Colonel Weber, Forest Whitaker, to work along side theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly, Jeremy Renner. They've been called in to decipher the language of a pair of alien cephalopods called Heptapods who've arrived in a giant shell-shaped space craft, that along with 11 other ships have taken up hovering positions above key locations across the world. But are these strange alien visitors your usual 'we come in peace' invaders, or are their intentions actually beneficial? It's up to Adams and Renner to find out before mankind gets itchy trigger fingers and blows them all to hell.
And that's all you really need to know about it, plot-wise. It's far better you go in knowing as little as possible about this exceptional film.
This is a truly satisfying and engrossing film that plays out subtly and slowly. With stunning cinematography, beautiful soundtrack and some fantastic performances, this was a joy to behold from beginning to end and just goes to show what a solid, adult science fiction film can achieve. Please sir, can I have some more?
Catch it on the big screen if you can, it's really worth it!
9/10
But don't sit on the fence; what do you really think?
ReplyDelete