Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) -2016

The aliens have arrived in twelve vessels but they forgot to bring the universal translator that is always helpful when attempting to communicate with bizarre life forms.  Amy Adams is the brilliant linguist who may be the only person in Montana able to decipher the seemingly random, circular ink blots that the visitors spew from their tentacles.  The warmongers among us (you know who you are) immediately want to destroy the invaders, but surely such an advanced civilization has already planned for that eventuality.  Nuclear weapons, schmuclear weapons!  It appears that the aliens are friendly and may have brought gifts for us that would be useful for those of us who want to forget that we just elected a racist, misogynist demagogue to be our president.  The director leaves so many questions unanswered so that viewers might ponder the meaning of life or the real difference between cultures.  But, the truth is that he has no answers for us but has 30 million bucks in the pockets of the production company for the first week in theatres. [JAM 11/18/2016]