Starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, Denis Villeneuve’s brainy sci-fi thriller “Arrival” is receiving strong buzz after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Following “Sicario,” Villeneuve’s latest also involves a woman being recruited onto a male-laden task force. Instead of an F.B.I. agent joining the D.E.A. to root out a drug cartel, “Arrival” has a linguist (Adams) teaming up with the military to translate alien communications. With comparisons to “Interstellar” and “Contact,” this is a film to watch through fall festivals (screening at Telluride and TIFF) and in the upcoming awards season.
Check out pull-quotes from festival reviews down below, as well as a bunch of twitter reactions from female film critics on the ground at the fest. (We’ve updated the following reviews and reactions to include those from Telluride and will be updating with coverage from TIFF.)
“‘Arrival,’ the shimmering apex of Villeneuve’s run of form that started back in 2010 with ‘Incendies,’ calmly, unfussily and with superb craft, thinks its way out of the black hole that tends to open up when ideas like time travel, alien contact and the next phase of human evolution are bandied about.” — Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
“‘Arrival’s’ USP is its introspective heroine and the larger-than-life question she becomes a vehicle to pose. Fans of Villeneuve’s recent films ‘Sicario’ and ‘Prisoners’ won’t be surprised to find him probing at human impulses, but they may be disappointed at the lack of tension at play here when ‘Arrival’ goes into wide play mid-November.” — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily
“Less ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and more Linguistic Encounters of the Academic Kind, this is a sci-fi movie with intelligence, cerebral, and emotional. ‘Arrival’ stars Amy Adams as a language professor who is called in by the military when 12 vast alien spacecraft arrive and hover suspiciously above Earth.” — Kate Muir, The Times
“‘Arrival’ gives us a lot to take in, and the picture is big, somber and grand, if in the end somewhat sterile: Villeneuve (director of ‘Prisoners’ and ‘Sicario’), working from Ted Chiang’s short story ‘Story of Your Life,’ may be stretching the profundities a bit too far. But Adams gives a nicely polished, muted performance: She keeps the story grounded when the ideas Villeneuve is striving for threaten to get too lofty.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time
“The various emotions of the film, from joy to discovery with all shades of feelings in between, uplifted me and I walked out of ‘Arrival’ feeling like there is hope for us yet, if someone like Villeneuve exists.” — E. Nina Rothe, The Huffington Post
“Ted Chaing has written a story, Eric Heisserer has adapted that story, and Denis Villeneuve has made a film that won’t ever let me forget that time is both cruel and precious. That life is both beautiful and ugly. That we humans can create glorious art and make stupid mistakes. That some of us are born to enjoy an idyllic existence, while many more must endure a lifetime of suffering. That happiness is euphoric but fleeting.” — Sasha Stone, Awards Daily
“Every action she takes to decipher the aliens’ language –the two they speak with most frequently charmingly named Abbott and Costello- reminds the viewer the intricacies of human communication, the value of patience and all the ways we avoidably misunderstand each other. ‘Arrival,’ scored to perfection by Jóhann Jóhannsson, isn’t an ‘aliens vs. humans’ wartime story, but instead, an ode to the unity of the universe, and the beauty of peacekeeping.” — Tomris Laffly, Film Journal International
Villeneuves #Arrival was great too wartch. Not as smart as it thinks but wonderfully naive, curious and hopeful. #Venezia73
ArrivalMovie is beautiful, sentimental sci-fi for linguists, could have been geekier for my taste, but I liked it a lot #Venezia73
— @mmiedl
Villeneuve's Arrival never lifts off. After the thrills of Sicario, this is more pedestrian and a little too earnest. #Venezia73 @HeyUGuys
I'd like #Arrival to be framed into a broader convo on circularity & montage in scifi films #Venezia73
Arrival è una bella prova di coraggio per #DenisVilleneuve, maestro di immagine. Eppure la trama poco concreta non convince. #Venezia73
LIVE on #Periscope: Amy Adams q&a at Telluride for Arrival https://t.co/Y8eZ7e4XIG
ARRIVAL: wow, still processing but I really enjoyed that ride. Felt like Kubrick + Malick + Nolan but still all Villeneuve! #Telluride
Just leaving ARRIVAL, a Close Encounters-esque mind bender that deals with space, time + alien contact, + gazing up at the stars. #Telluride
Remember the first time you saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind? That was Arrival. And the hero of the story is a woman. Loved it.
— @melsil
Amy Adams literally saves the world in Arrival. And she didn't need to fly or have superpowers. My kind of flick.
— @melsil
Arrival, şu 3 sınavdan geçen nadir bilimkurgulardan biri. İyi çekilmiş, oynanmış, en önemlisi saçmalamıyor. #TIFF16
Ecos de Kubrick, del Tarkovsky de SOLARIS y el relato más emotivo de contacto extraterrestre desde CE3K de Spielberg: ARRIVAL. #TIFF2016
TIFF16: Loud applause after today's screening of #Arrival--a soulful, moving sci-fi drama about time, loss, and language. And aliens.
