I haven't gotten around to seeing "Batman v. Superman" yet, but I did see "Man of Steel." My reaction to Lois in "Man of Steel" was basically "why is she in this movie, what was her purpose supposed to be? This character has absolutely no impact on the film and could have been cut from the script with no apparent…

I found this interesting, it's a look at non-human alien design in film. Unfortunately, only a little bit on "Arrival" - https://www.youtube.com/wat…

The clouds spilling down the mountain and into the valley and around the base of the ship is heartbreakingly gorgeous. The beautiful natural setting makes an excellent contrast to the sterile and forbidding alien ship and the utilitarian military camp.

Pretzel M&M's are the best M&M's

I loved all of that stuff, I also really enjoyed the themes and explorations of communication and language. Fantastic movie.

The threat of the humans doing harm to the aliens and what humanity could miss out on if the aliens left due to being attacked provided sufficient stakes for me.

He'd better not spoil "Game of Thrones!"

Last week I left a reply to a 5 year old comment in a "NewsRadio" review that was posted 7 years ago.

Damn, I just realized I can't remember where exactly in the film I figured out that the scenes with Hannah were in the future. It was somewhere in the middle, I definitely had it by the flash-forward where she's putting Hannah's boot back on and explaining why Daddy left and is acting weird.

The daughter isn't referenced, it's just a "how are you?" I'm sure the filmmakers meant it to be perceived by the audience that Louise's mother was asking how she was coping in the wake of her daughter's death, but given how the movie plays out I believe she's just asking how she's coping with the sudden arrival of…

I had the same initial impression. When Louise says "Who is this child?" my reaction was "are the aliens messing with her mind?" and "how much, if anything, of her memories of Hannah are real?"

"Serpent eating its own tail" is a good way to put it. The impression I got was of a self-reinforcing loop; the more Louise learned the alien language, the more she remembered the future. The more she remembered the future, the more of the alien language she knew. And repeat.

Grand Galactic Inquisitor, is that you?

I should really read farther down before posting. Well said!

Also, the Mandarin she's speaking is untranslated. We know that she told him his wife's dying words, but we don't know what else she said. Her having his private phone number and knowing his wife's dying words may have just been what it took to get him to listen and believe what else she told him.

The movie opens with a shot looking out through the glass wall of Louise's house over the water. There's a bottle of wine and TWO wine glasses on the table and some other things on it. This is identical to the shot that opens the scene at the end that ends with the lines "Do you want to make a baby?" "Yes." To me…

This is kind of splitting semantic hairs, which I guess is appropriate given the linguistic themes of this film, but I don't want to call it a twist either. For me a cinematic twist is basically the movie yelling "Surprise," like the reveal at the end of "The Sixth Sense." I agree that this is best called a gradual…

Yeah, Amy Adams is one of those people whose age is really hard to pin down just by looking at them.

I thought the verbal time travel duel with the villain was in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey?" Of course, I haven't seen either film in around 15 years so I could easily be wrong. But I do say to my brother "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K" every time we drive by the one by his house.

Well, that's because the act of learning a new language rewiring your brain to the extent where your perception of time so fundamentally changes is bullshit. From an article Slate did on "Arrival:" - "Betty Birner, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Northern Illinois University, told Slate that while…