From the jump of a piercing prologue that plays like Christopher Nolan’s “Up” to a bittersweet, mind-bending resolution, “Arrival” boldly inverts every expectation you might have for a film about invading aliens. The pro forma military / CIA presence is both everywhere and ephemeral; voices bellowing instructions across a plain where one of 12 alien spacecraft has hovered worldwide feel infinitely more disembodied than the beasties’ tentacles themselves.
Arrival
Arrival
Arrival
From the jump of a piercing prologue that plays like Christopher Nolan’s “Up” to a bittersweet, mind-bending resolution, “Arrival” boldly inverts every expectation you might have for a film about invading aliens. The pro forma military / CIA presence is both everywhere and ephemeral; voices bellowing instructions across a plain where one of 12 alien spacecraft has hovered worldwide feel infinitely more disembodied than the beasties’ tentacles themselves.