Arrival | What to Watch

(Image credit: © E1 Entertainment/Paramount Pi)

Twelve spacecraft are dotted about the globe and Amy Adams’ linguist has to try to make contact with the visitors

Twelve spacecraft are dotted about the globe and Amy Adams’ linguist has to try to make contact with the visitors.

Director Denis Villeneuve's superb Oscar-nominated sci-fi drama suggests that wonder and humility would be a smarter response than gung-ho bluster if extraterrestrials suddenly turned up on Earth.

Sensibly, that's the attitude taken by Adams' fiercely intelligent heroine after Forest Whitaker's gruff US army intelligence colonel conscripts her to join a team of experts gathered at the spacecraft’s site in Montana. What do the aliens want with us? And how do we find out?

As Adams and scientist colleague Jeremy Renner, togged out in cumbersome orange hazmat suits, try to communicate with the aliens, Earth's military leaders are becoming dangerously jumpy.

With the planet teetering on the brink of disaster, Villeneuve effectively ramps up the tension, but he also supplies awesome images and challenging concepts, while the terrific Adams supplies the movie's heart.