Arrival
12A 116 mins
12A 116 mins
When 12 alien spacecraft enter Earth’s atmosphere and hang sentinel over the planet, workaholic linguistics expert Louise Banks (Adams) is called in by US Army Colonel Weber (Whitaker) to lead government attempts to communicate. Working with scientist Ian Donnelly (Renner), she seeks the answer to one very simple question: what do they want? As the team begin to grasp the complex language of their interstellar guests, they realise they must race against the doomsday clock of growing global paranoia to discover the truth.
Denis Villeneuve’s portrayal of first contact has less to do with aliens than it does with humankind’s reaction to them: it’s a powerful look at what makes us human, joining the ranks of ambitious films such as Interstellar and The Martian that reflect a maturation of the big-screen sci-fi genre.