Arrival

Here’s a late review of Arrival. I looked at the newspaper this weekend and couldn’t find a Goddamn new movie I wanted to see. Not that piece of shit about dogs reincarnating because I already knew that because my dog’s breath smells like all the dead dogs he used to be. Not that piece of shit Resident Evil movie, because seeing another one of those is like eating a lightbulb, discovering it makes shitting a painfully bloody exercise, and then going back for more bulbs. I’m a sucker for movies about people finding treasures in jungles, but that one starring Matthew McConaughey looks like no fun at all.

Arrival, though, was playing at the Arvada Elvis, our $4 second-run theater, and that’s before the two-for-one coupons they put on the back of grocery store receipts. That price meant I could take Mrs. Filthy with me and still have enough of my weekly allowance left for two Four Lokos and a mini bottle of Fireball whiskey. It was a win-win for me and my alcohol dependence. My wondrous, magical alcohol dependence, second only to my wife in my heart, and slightly ahead of her in fulfilling promises (Mrs. Filthy has never given me the slot car track she said she’d buy if I painted our bedroom – I painted half of it, so where is half of the track-the half with the cars?).

I don’t know if it’s the cheap tickets, the lax security, the faded carpet, the tattered chairs, or the trailers saying “Coming in 2016,” but the Elvis attracts what I call a “festival” crowd, akin to the behavior you’d expect from watching a demolition derby with meth-heads. Cell phones flicker on and off throughout the movie, teenagers use their outdoor voices, illicit bottles clink against the concrete floor, and someone usually gets stabbed. But there’s something democratic about it. At these prices, practically anyone can go to the movies, regardless of whether or not they know how to behave at one.

So the Mrs. and I took two seats in front of some stoned kids and behind a family who had snuck in fried chicken in their pockets, and we all watched Arrival. This is a sci-fi movie, but sort of an eggheaded one as far as Hollywood goes. That is, it isn’t particularly concerned with sending pilots up to shoot lasers at space destroyers, it won’t make you want to burn out in the parking lot in your pickup truck while shouting “USA! USA!” It’s largely about a linguist learning to communicate with these squid-like creatures that come to Earth in huge, oblong rocks.

Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, the linguist, a lonely, nerdy midwestern professor whose class is disrupted by news that a dozen alien spaceships have settled over the planet. She has previously helped the Army in translating Farsi, so they ask if she can help them with communicate with the aliens. To paraphrase the shitty clickbait scum Outbrain, “You won’t believe what happens next!”

Banks is whisked to Montana and a temporary compound beside the nearest alien ship. The other eleven are in other countries. She is partnered with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who really isn’t given much theorizing to do. He just supports Banks and makes googly eyes at her.

The aliens exist in a sort of mist bubble inside their giant rock. They look like terrestrial octopus missing a tentacle, and they speak in guttural groans that sound like the time Mrs. Filthy sat on a fork; discomfort, but perhaps not enough to get up and do something about it. The challenge is that their language is rooted in nothing earthly; there is no known starting point for Banks to understand them.

While the soldiers have no clue what to do, including taking their directions from right-wing radio hacks, Banks follows a methodical approach to reaching out to the aliens, introducing words and watching the aliens respond in inky clouds of hieroglyphs. Slowly, though, she and the creatures begin to understand each other.

Simultaneously, the other nations trying to understand the aliens who have arrived stop sharing data. Each is too territorial and too afraid an ally or enemy will steal ideas and get a global advantage. China wants to bomb the shit out of the new immigrants, and Russia follows suit because they have misinterpreted the message brought to Earth.

Banks struggles with her own demons while she cracks the alien code. There are flashes from other parts of her life, a sick child who dies, a man who leaves them, loneliness, and it takes a while to understand their relevance. My expectation was it was the typical Hollywood back story for a hero, but I was wrong. Way wrong. As wrong as the time I bet that he shin is not made of bone and tried to prove it with a ball peen hammer. Where I was wrong is where Arrival is really fucking right.

The first half, maybe more, of Arrival is a slow go. Watching a nerdy professor try to communicate mist-shrouded, somewhat elephantine monsters is not thrilling cinema. Even more boring is watching her in the barracks trying to decipher hieroglyphs. All of that tedium, though, is a fair price for a genuinely surprising ending. I’ m not going to spoil shit for nobody, but I’ll say the payoff is worth it in ways I could not have expected.

Not that the ending is perfect. Renner’s character is in position to realize the wet dream of virtually any theoretical physicist, and yet the movie never lets him. It’s like if one day I really encountered the giant Mickey’s Big Mouth bottle that haunts most of my dreams, the one with a vagina and huge boobs, and all I did was shake its hand. Visually and sonically, the movie is drab and gray, as though 40% of the blood has been sucked out of it. The movie also takes itself too seriously, as does almost any movie with Forest Whitaker in it (he plays a colonel). I mean, it’s damn good and a generally thoughtful sci-fi movie, but it’s still just that, and given its big reveal, it could have had more fun with the premise.

I’m giving it Four Fingers, though. Plus, as always, Five Fingers for the Elvis.