Review: Arrival (2016)

“There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived.”
– Dr Louise Banks

SYNOPSIS: When twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world, linguistics professor Louise Banks is tasked with interpreting the language of the apparent alien visitors. – via IMDB

I saw a trailer for this a while ago and thought it looked interesting. I was infinitely more curious when I saw Denis Villeneuve’s name attached to the project as I rather like his work. Arrival did not disappoint at all, and was definitely one of the better alien movies I have seen in a while, and I am a sucker for them. It definitely got right what most alien movies don’t – the movie maintained an air of mystery, it was smart, while the aliens were super important, we didn’t get to see too much of them (I mean this visually, not that they were not present), but what we did see of them was icky man.

Despite having Amy Adams helm the film (which for me could potentially have held it back, she is one of those actresses that irrationally annoys the shit out of me), it worked out just fine. In fact, I think Adams did a good job with the material she was given. I also enjoyed Jeremy Renner in this, and liked the interactions between Ian and Louise. I was glad that Villeneuve did not force a love story into the middle of this, as a romance was totally secondary to all that was going on.

I really liked how the film took time to set itself up. It was never rushed, or too slow and dull. The story was also very engaging. It took its time to set up a solid movie, which was also directed perfectly and visually appealing, well acted, and had a brilliant score to accompany it. There was just so much to enjoy here. As I mentioned before, I was pleased that we didn’t see too much of the aliens, as it maintained mystery and kept them super creepy. I appreciate how smart Arrival is, too, because I love a movie that makes me think.

Arrival is an impressive alien/sci-fi film, and definitely impressed me. I can highly recommend it. Sharp, shot beautifully and carried by strong performances, this movie will make you think on things for quite some time, and I like that.

You can totally skip the trailer and just go straight on to the movie.

November Blind Spot Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012)

“Well, if you’re going to reprogram human genetic material, you need a delivery system, and nothing works better than virus. It’s like a suitcase.”
– Dr Marta Shearing

SYNOPSIS: Aaron Cross, a new hero, experiences life-or-death stakes that have been triggered by previous events. – via IMDB

Okay, there we have it. I have finally watched this. After putting it off for so long. Like, forever, because you can’t stamp “Bourne” over something but discard of Matt Damon. Honestly, that’s how I feel. Well, watching this I could think only that this isn’t necessarily a bad movie at all, it just suffers heavily from being cast under the Bourne banner. The movie spent a lot of time establishing that this was going down concurrently with The Bourne Ultimatum, though at a later stage it flicks to Jason escaping, again, Pam Landy being in a lot of trouble, and this story continuing independently. Which would be fine, except what this story was relying on was probably one of the thinnest thread in movie history. Like, really. There is so much potential here, and they got the meat of it down, just the implementation of it was messy. Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross was definitely not like Bourne. Well, trained, maybe, and sporting a great jacket, but aside from that? Totally different. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the original Cross, who was in actual fact Kenneth James Kitsom, was a little bit slower than your average person. Not saying this offensively, he just comes across as more caring, softer. He was emotional. Yes, he will do what it takes to get away and all that, but Marie was initially a necessity for Jason, and that grew into something. I suppose the same could be argued for Cross and Marta Shearing, but it really isn’t the same. The logic didn’t quite follow as cleanly in this installment to the Bourne franchise. Case in point? When the “psychiatrist” started yelling, Marta should have realised something was amiss. One thing that really was super sad for me was seeing Kitsom before he became Cross. It was depressing and sad, and raised a whole bunch of other questions for me. Such as, if he was 12 points shy of the minimum requirement for the US Army, surely that means that he is not legally allowed to consent to them experimenting on him? I mean, if he cannot legally join the military, surely he cannot legally tell them to create a super soldier out of him? Just saying. Interesting avenue to explore right there. I found Cross to be quite endearing towards Marta, and Weisz and Renner worked well together. Renner was a great Cross, and I enjoyed his character quite a bit. There is potential to work with there. I think the biggest downfall of this is that Cross’s story feels like it was shoved in between Bourne’s stuff, to introduce him, but it was done sloppily, and his whole story was a giant thing of survive and get the drugs. No more, no less. I felt as if the exhilaration of the previous three films was missing here. Yeah, action involved for sure, but nothing that really thrills. Small gripe from me, too, is that there were times were there were very awkward attempts at subtle humour. As I said, not necessarily an awful film, it’s just not really a Bourne film. I suppose, like The Godfather: Part III, if you look at it as something that does not belong to the canon, then it isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. But if you compare it to its namesake, it will fall quite short of the mark.