By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Denis Villenueve’s “Arrival” is an exciting, provocative, intellectually stimulating sci-fi thriller.
Combining the wonderment of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” while jettisoning the perception of linear time, it’s about Earth’s first contact with an alien civilization.
When 12 mysterious spacecraft touch down around the globe, renowned linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is summoned by Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) to try to decipher their intergalactic intentions.
Still mourning the death of her young daughter, Louise realizes that this is a mind-bending adventure. En route to the nearest landing site in Montana, she’s joined by theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), an expert in binary code.
While they evaluate the unnervingly dark, 1,500-foot high, ovoid spaceship, panic ensues as foreign governments attempt their own extraterrestrial ‘first contact.’ According to CIA agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), China and Russia are particularly aggrieved.
Aboard the vessel, they must adjusting to minimal gravity in a steep shaft and ascend to a chamber where Louise attempts to communicate with its otherworldly inhabitants, immense squid-like creatures, called heptapods, hovering behind a transparent, protective barrier.
Dubbed Abbott and Costello by Louise and Ian, two aliens materialize out of a dense mist. Louise notices that the clicking, whale-like sounds they emit don’t correlate with the ideograms that their splayed claws squirt forth – squishy, enigmatic calligraphy, resembling Rorschach ink blobs.
Decrypting these symbols results in a stunning concept which Louise eventually comprehends. Alluding to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it’s the idea that your language determines how you perceive the world.
Eric Heisserer has adroitly adapted Ted Chiang’s cerebral novella “Story of Your Life,” directed with subtle resonance and admirable restraint by Denis Villenueve (“Sicario,” “Incendies”) – with flashbacks evoking poetic concepts of life and death, love and loss.
Luminous Amy Adams’ vulnerable melancholy is enhanced by Bradford Young’s gray, overcast cinematography, Patrice Vermette’s fantastic production design, and Johann Johannsson’s eerie score.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Arrival” is a thrilling 10, an enlightening, inspiring allegory for our times. One of the year’s best.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe expands with “Dr. Strange,” a dazzling, kaleidoscopic prelude set in a Nepalese monastery, where villainous Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson) teleports into a guarded library, rips a page from an ancient tome and departs through a weird portal leading into downtown London.
Meanwhile, celebrated Manhattan neurosurgeon, Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), proves he’s as narcissistic as he is gifted, his unbridled arrogance causing a horrific automobile accident that leaves his trembling hands unable to use a scalpel.
Desperate to regain his self-esteem, Dr. Strange turns to the mystic arts, seeking a spiritual miracle by making a pilgrimage to a place called Kamar-Taj in the mountains of Kathmandu, presided over by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), a bald, ageless, certainly androgynous Celtic woman.
“You wonder what I see in your future?” she asks. “Possibility.”
Sure enough, aided by her assistants Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Wong (Benedict Wong), sardonic Strange turns out to be a quick learner, discovering how to connect with his astral body in preparation to battle evil Kaecilius and his elusive god Dormammu, who dwells in the Dark Dimension.
Created by Stan Lee and Dali-esque artist Steve Ditko, Dr. Strange first appeared in 1963 as part of the Human Torch series in “Strange Tales” Comics.
Perceptively scripted with sly quips by director Scott Derrickson, Strange’s origin story is a hallucinogenic trip, the fantasy/action amplified by a psychedelic CGI time-loop and spatial displacement.
Unfortunately, Dr. Strange’s exasperated love interest, fellow surgeon Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), has little to do, while humor emanates from the mischievous Cloak of Levitation.
On the Granger Gauge, “Dr. Strange” is a spectacularly surreal 8, an awesome introduction to a fascinating Marvel character appearing as ‘Sorcerer Supreme’ in the upcoming “Thor Ragnarok” (2017) and “The Avengers Infinity War” (2018).
Ewan McGregor has not been successful in adapting Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “American Pastoral,” revolving around a father’s disillusionment with the American Dream when his daughter becomes a terrorist during the socio-political turmoil of the late 1960s. But it’s not for lack of trying.
Awkwardly bookended by novelist Nathan Zuckerman’s (David Strathairn) visit to his 45th high-school reunion, it’s the story of Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov (McGregor), a Jewish ‘golden boy’ and star athlete, who marries Dawn Dwyer (Jennifer Connelly), an Irish-Catholic beauty queen, and settles into a seemingly bucolic life on a farm in Old Rimrock, a WASPy western New Jersey township.
Having inherited his father’s glove factory in Newark, Swede is an avowed liberal, employing a work force that is 80% black. So it’s somewhat inexplicable when his rebellious 16 year-old daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning) becomes radicalized, bombing the local post-office/gas station and killing its proprietor before joining the Weather Underground and disappearing for many years.
Long after his wife’s nervous breakdown, stoic Swede continues to search for Merry, which is why he responds to a mysterious visit from seductive Rita Cohen (Valorie Curry), who claims to have information about her whereabouts.
The story is narrated by Swede’s younger brother, Jerry (Rupert Evans), but what screenwriter John Romano and director MacGregor fail to grasp is Roth’s acerbic humor and sarcasm, so the result is shallow and superficial.
It was folly for Ewan McGregor to star in his directorial debut; he needed that ‘third eye’ to guide his choices, including casting the leading man. And his depiction of the Newark riots is woefully inadequate.
On the Granger Gauge, “American Pastoral” is a florid, flawed 5, compressed into tawdry melodrama.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
