Arrival (2016)
My favorite movie being Contact, this is on all accounts the movie that come closest. I was obviously excited when I first saw it, as I had read the short story by Ted Chiang - who is also among the best science fiction writers of our time, and it held up to the high expectations. This is now maybe the third time I see it and it is still among the very best science fiction movies ever, but it doesn’t quite have the same impact as the first time and not the same staying power for me as Contact still has. What works really well here is whole first contact premise and how it is executed, where things happen in reasonably believable manner. The slow methodical work of the linguistics, the impatient military and the tension in global politics. The gradual reveal of what everything really means to the inevitable conclusion. Where I think the movie falls a little bit short, mostly comes down to the lack of interesting depth to Jeremy Renner’s character. He is just there to fill a role in the plot and is almost meaningless beyond that - lacking ambition, goals and backstory. He barely needs to be in the movie at all, which to me makes the emotional anchor the narrative is supposed to build fall a tiny bit short of its potential.
Rating: 4.5