Not very Dissensian and a big break from the kind of films discussed in the last couple of pages, but I saw Arrival the other day and was pretty impressed by it. Anyone else here seen it? It's an alien contact film, centred around a linguist (F) and scientist (M) in their attempts to communicate with the aliens and find out why they've come here, before mass rioting and End Times cults completely tear society apart (and before mutual suspicion among the various human nations ends with them flinging nukes at the aliens and each other). There's a backstory about the linguist's daughter which I'd thought was kind of mawkish and gratuitous but actually turns out to be pivotal to the plot and ended up working really well.
OK, so it's [SPOLIERS] time! As moving as it is to have the linguist decide to have a child in the full knowledge the girl will die of cancer in mid-adolescence, the idea of an alien form of writing that rewires the human brain so as to allow one to see into the future is a smidge far-fetched - but perhaps no more so than artificial gravity or spaceships that travel the cosmos by materializing and dematerializing. And if you can accept that, you can accept the other time-loop plot element involving the Chinese general. I thought it a possible shout-out to Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse-5, who don't so much 'see the future' as simply see time as another static dimension, fully analogous to space. Dunno if this is a deliberate reference, but it's a nice touch anyway.
Other plot gripes: after going out of their way to make the aliens so very alien, and have them communicate with the humans visually via a transparent barrier, it's a touch convenient that when the linguist is carried aboard into the main portion of the ship, the atmosphere inside is not only close enough to Earth's atmosphere in composition, pressure and temperature that a human can survive in it for several minutes, but it apparently isn't even uncomfortable for her. Also, if they're smart enough to master the manipulation of gravity and interstellar travel via hyperspace (or whatever), it seems a bit odd that it's up to us lowly humans to master their language, and not the other way around - to say nothing of how the woman finally communicates with the aliens by addressing them in English and interpreting their symbols in return in a vaguely Han-and-Greedo sort of way, which rather raises the question of why they didn't just communicate like this to start with. Oh, and when she and Dr Science get together at the end, it's after a total absence of any kind of chemistry between them throughout the whole of the rest of the film! Even when they finally embrace, it's not a snog but more of a weary hug between two people who've been through a lot together. Although I guess there are kinds of attraction that aren't based mainly on eroticism, so whatever.
Good bits: the aforementioned alien-ness of the aliens, which are pleasingly Cthulhoid. Great SFX in a way that doesn't detract from the story. Solid acting. The twist was pretty good and actually very moving, I thought.
Bad bits: did they have to make the Chinese a bunch of paranoid, nuke-happy dicks? And the American soldiers a gang of boneheads who think any situation they don't like can be fixed with a bomb?
OK, enough [/SPOLIERS]. Overall, a slightly flawed but thoughtful and engaging sci-fi flick.