Arrival is the finest first contact film since District 9 and takes its place alongside that work and Spielberg’s standard setter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as one of the best tales of the initial meeting between humans and extraterrestrials ever told on film. (Note: Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey are unfair; Kubrick’s masterpiece occupies a unique and special place.) Arrival earns this distinction by way of its thoroughly original take on the alien life forms that come to Earth in 12 huge elliptical ships that hover off the ground in an inexplicable set of locations that include Russia, China, Australia, and Sudan. The aliens in Arrival not only sport an unexpected look, but their manner of communication is something we have not seen in a mainstream movie before.
Posts Tagged ‘Denis Villeneuve’
Arrival Review
Posted: October 23, 2016 in 2016 London Film Festival, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Amy Adams, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Denis Villeneuve, District 9, Forest Whitaker, Jeremy Renner
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Enemy Review
Posted: March 31, 2014 in Drama, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Denis Villeneuve, doppelganger, Existentialism, Jake Gyllenhaal, Movies
If you like blueberries, would your doppelganger like them as well?
If your wife is blonde, would your doppelganger’s girlfriend also be blonde?
If you had a doppelganger, which of you would be the evil one?
Who am you? Who are I?
These are the questions asked, but not answered in director Denis Villeneuve’s and screenwriter Javier Gullón’s new feature, Enemy. In order of appearance, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as history teacher Adam Hall and actor Anthony St. Claire, two men of no seeming significance outside of their circles of friends and acquaintances and no apparent relation beyond an uncanny resemblance.
Meet Mr. Karma 