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Showing posts from February, 2024

Arrival (2016)

Does the will to live not dim a little whenever “The Nature of Daylight” starts playing? If I can just offer one helpful note to the producers of Hollywood and television: we hate this piece of music, it’s always been shit, stop using it. Apparently, Denis Villeneuve had wanted to make a science-fiction film since he began his career as a director - a career of, let's say, unpredictable choices - and settled on this: aliens land on Earth and the US Army press-gangs the world’s top linguistics experts into figuring out how to talk to them, so "we" don’t have to start a war. The experts, led by Louise (played by Amy Adams) don’t really have to be asked twice, what with it being the biggest event in history, although from the dour mood of the Army you would think it was latrine duty. SF fans might remember elements of this from Ian Watson’s novel The Embedding. So they put on their astronaut suits for protection and pop round to meet the new neighbours. The film then follo