Xixax Film Forum

Film Discussion => The Vault => Topic started by: polkablues on August 10, 2016, 02:51:37 PM

Title: Arrival
Post by: polkablues on August 10, 2016, 02:51:37 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwqSi_ToNPs

New Denis Villeneuve movie. Looks great.
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: ©brad on November 14, 2016, 02:50:58 PM
It is great. Amy Adams carries this. Maybe my favorite performance of hers.

If you like Villeneuve (and you probably should), you'll like this. Very haunting, with a smart script that's quite thrilling at times. I'm glad movies like this, which feels like a Sundance take on sci-fi only with a decent budget, are still getting made.
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: The Ultimate Badass on November 14, 2016, 09:44:49 PM
I liked this one a lot, as well -- a very deftly structured and directed movie.

I had some big issues with some of the writing/ plotting, which I found disappointingly cartoonish at a few points. But I really liked this one nonetheless. I think that's because it's really about Adams' story, as well as that big idea that reveals itself at the end, and the plot is really just there to move things along so its shortcomings can be glossed over, to a certain degree.
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: Lottery on November 15, 2016, 07:26:22 AM
I liked it too.
Heartfelt and very contemporary. Uses a couple of old sci-fi tropes and cliches to create something that services the emotional aspects of the story very well. Seems almost a bit too serious at times but I did appreciate the heavy and deliberate atmosphere of the film.
And agreed, Adams is great- there was a certain balance between vulnerability and purpose in her performance that I really liked.
I've yet to watch Sicario but I liked this more than Prisoners and Enemy. Villeneuve is looking pretty good right now.

Some of the flashbacky moments reminded me of Malick as well as the hazy moments of Inception (Nolan has already started the influence of old Terry though).
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on November 15, 2016, 02:41:10 PM
I thought this was pretty damn magnificent. I loved the simplicity of it, it was clean and straightforward and tonally assured. Not to mention beautiful, moving, with yet another killer Amy Adams performance carrying us through.

Thematically it was pretty damn on the nose, but I would say thats a feature and not a bug. Ideally this film can play to any audience in any country in the world and people will understand what it's trying to say. Its an amazing trick to make smart sci-fi that can be universally understood.

We need more of these! Intelligent mid-budget films that are thrilling, satisfying, and above all, human.
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on December 15, 2016, 01:44:26 PM
Look at this bluray cover. It looks like every other bluray cover.

It's important that we see inside Amy Adams's nostrils, and that the dumb look on Jeremy Renner's face is immortalized.

The characters have also found themselves in a nesting doll situation here.

I still really need to see this movie though.
Title: Re: Arrival
Post by: Robyn on September 25, 2017, 10:42:26 PM
I just watched this for the first time and I'm getting more and more convinced that Denis Villeneuve is one of the best directors working today. He kind of reminds me of David Fincher in the sense that he will craft every film in the most perfect way- give him a good script and he will deliver something amazing that few other directors could do.

Prisoners is still his best imo, but this come pretty close. I liked how the twist at the end is that it's not a story about humanity as a whole but the two main characters in it. You are expecting something else in the end, some grand sci-fi idea or a chessy comment on society or something like that, just to realize at the very end of it that the film is about these two characters, their emotions and how they found each other. It made the film feel so much more refreshing. I'm surprised that you guys haven't talked about it more.