Release Date: November 23, 2016

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Writing Credits: John Musker, Ron Clements, Taika Waititi, Jared Bush

Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Ruth Chiang, Michael Stuhlbarg and more.

Our Rating: A

Arrival is a movie that continues the trend of space travel movies such as “Interstellar ” and “The Martian.” However, in this film, humans don’t go to outer space –  outer space comes to Earth. When alien spaceships land across the planet, Amy Adams’ character, Louise Banks, is tasked with communicating with the extra terrestrials. When Arrival first came out, it received a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes; now it sits comfortably at 93%, which is still a remarkable score.

More than just a standard alien-invasion,  Arrival covers concepts like the convolution of linguistics, predestination, and time. It’s able to delve deep into these themes while making it fit into the movie, rather than feeling out of place. Villeneuve also does a great job when setting the tone of each scene. He brilliantly chose each of the visuals and audio for each scene. The secrecy and suspense of the plot complement each other in a way that the movie reveals enough to keep viewers intrigued, but not so much that it spoils the end. Villeneuve has done a great job, not only with the movie, but with the choice of actors too.

“In my opinion, the reason why it was so good is because it was different to all other alien invasion movies,” sophomore Julius Telleria said.

Adams portrays Louise banks in a way that no one else could’ve done it. She adds depth to the the character and makes her seem like more that just your typical linguistics expert. The authenticity she brings to the character is stunning and makes the movie feel real. The rest of the cast also put up a great performance and made the movie look like a real event.

Arrival is definitely one of the best sci-fi movies of the year. Villeneuve tried to take a different route to the typical alien invasion and it worked for him. The movie has been a huge success and has earned a ton of excellent reviews.