No. I understand it was well received, but I don't think it ticks enough boxes for me.
That's too bad.
Great, "cerebral-with-a-heart" science fiction is so hard to come by in this age of whooshing-in-the-vacuum-of-space ships, Viking gods in cosmic combat, and other assorted baby Yodas.
Just like I did with
Annihilation (another thinking person's sci-fi flick) and the original Jeff Vandermeer trilogy of novellas that were its source, I went and re-read the story by Ted Chiang upon which
Arrival is based, just so I could better ground my appreciation for the extent to which Time itself is a language (and a protagonist) in the film, and then watched the movie again.
It ranks up there, as a science fiction gem, with (in no particular order):
-
2001: A Space Odyssey
-
Annihilation
-
Primer
-
Under the Skin (best sci-fi creepfest this side of
Alien)
-
Cloud Atlas
-
Moon
-
Donnie Darko
-
Brazil
-
The Fountain
-
Sunshine
-
Ex Machina
-
Inception
-
District 9
...and a handful of others.
As always, though, to each their own.