Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Arrival

There are a handful of genres that I respect more than most. Science fiction is one of them. The ability to view modern society through the lens of a futuristic or quasi-futuristic story is a powerful tool. From the dawn of the genre, an early one in cinema history as well, audiences have been engaged by the possibilities. They see what’s possible. I see where we can improve.

That’s why a film like Arrival is a different kind of beast. After a group of 12 alien ships appear in the skies across the globe, a linguist is brought in to try and communicate with the creatures before various superpowers around the globe decide to get violent and potentially ruin whatever peaceful contact is possible. Amy Adams plays the linguist in a touching, even-handed performance that calls to action her grace and strength as a performer without a reliance on excessive theatrics.

Supporting her as well as they can are Jeremy Renner as a theoretical physicist, Forest Whitaker as the U.S. field commander, and Michael Stuhlbarg as a CIA contact. Together, they struggle to discover the aliens’ purpose in coming to the planet and find out whether they are peaceful or not. Denis Villeneuve has grown into his own as a filmmaker with this being his most mature and pensive film to date. You have to pay close attention to the film to figure out where it’s going, but when everything finally clicks, it’s the kind of cathartic moment many films hope to engender in their audiences.

Strong music and sound design support a solid set of visual effects, solid to decent performances, and story that’s introspective, thought-provoking, and intensely interesting. While the film takes time getting where it’s going, the events are well placed and flow effortlessly together to make it feel shorter than it is.