Denis Villeneuve is a director that you daren’t take your eye off. Having broke onto the scene with the stellar one-two punch of Prisoners and last year’s narcotics thriller Sicario, the filmmaker will soon be bound for the neon-drenched streets of future LA with Blade Runner 2 – but not before Villeneuve can squeeze out a sci-fi passion project.
It’s called Arrival, and imagines a scenario in which an alien space vessel has crash landed on Earth, spurring the governments of the world into motion as they attempt to make contact. Leading that mission is expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who takes one giant – and potentially devastating – leap for humanity by travelling into the ship itself.
Also starring Jeremy Renner, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story alum Forest Whitaker, Tzi Ma, and Michael Stuhlbarg, Arrival is billed as an amalgamation of a Stanley Kubrick and a Steven Spielberg movie, and you can thank cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma, A Most Violent Year) for the film’s hauntingly beautiful imagery.
Here’s an overview of what to expect about this deeply human story:
“When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team – lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) – is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.”
Arrival descends into theaters and poses the big questions when Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi feature opens on November 11.
