Arrival (2016)

Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, & Forest Whitaker

Rating: 1 1/2 out of 5 stars

Arrival is being called one of the best Science Fiction films in years. It is one of the best rated and reviewed films of 2016, and is drawing comparisons to Close Encounters of The Third Kind, but I have a question, did they watch the same film that I did? I wasn't crazy about Close Encounters, but that movie was leaps and bounds ahead of this one. Twelve alien crafts land in random places all across the planet, and the people are in a panic. Some countries react with hostility, but the U.S. Government decides to act cautiously (yeah right), and send Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the best linguist they have, to figure out a way to community with the aliens. The aliens, turn out to be giant octopus, whose language turns out to be ink that they squirt into the air. This movie features flashbacks and flash-forwards, that seemingly make no sense, until the end when you finally figure out what they mean and once you do, you realize that you just wasted two hours of your life. If that wasn't bad enough, the film moves at an absolute snails pace, I mean you could take everything that actually happened in the film and squeeze it into about twenty minutes. The rest is just people talking to each other about the same damn thing over and over again. Trying to figure out the same thing over and over again. Worrying about the same things over and over again. The characters have no personality whatsoever, and you might think that it's one of those slow moving weird films that all comes together in an amazing ending, but no, it doesn't. Once you can see the whole picture, as one lady in the theater so eloquently shouted out, "really, that's it, that was so stupid." Her uncontrolled outburst really sums up this entire film. Honestly I think the slower and more artistic a film is, the more the critics love it, but I am one critic who isn't fooled by great actors and emotional music, this isn't the best film of the year, this is the biggest turd of the year, and it should be avoided at all costs!