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Closed Encounters
"Arrival" lands at the perfect time By Jared Rasic
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As the Chinese and Russian governments are quickly looking to attack the aliens, the Americans do their best to decode the alien language so they can learn exactly what the aliens need. Everything that happens in this movie, good and bad, happens because of a failure to communicate on the part of humanity. Director Denis Villeneuve (“Enemy,” “Sicario”) proves he is one of the finest directors working today as he turns the story into a very matter-of-fact look at an alien “invasion.” The film reminded
Brief Glimpses
It’s everything or nothing with “Certain Women” By Jared Rasic
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iewers who aren’t trained in the art of arthouse (or the films of writer-director-editor Kelly Reichardt) might complain that “nothing happens” throughout the running time of “Certain Women.” Indeed, most of the incidents in these three cinematic poems are mostly internal. The moments of drama aren’t sweeping, but instead barely registered moments of pain, heartbreak and isolation in the eyes of four excellent actresses. Based on the short story collection, “Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It,” by Maile Meloy, “Certain Women” follows three lightly intertwining stories about four women across small-town Montana. The stories don’t inform each other, other than thematically, but they still feel like part of a very compelling whole.
The first story follows Laura Dern as a harried lawyer whose determined client (Jared Harris) was injured at his workplace and denied compensation through a legal loophole. He hounds her about it so relentlessly and things escalate so quickly that she learns what a truly desperate man will do. The second short features actress Michelle Williams playing a successful woman building a dream house in the country with her depressed, cheating husband and sullen daughter. An old and mentally fading man in the area has a pile of vintage sandstone she would like to use to build her home. Will she take the sandstone? It depends on whether she will allow herself to always be the bad guy. In the third story, a lonely ranch hand (Lily Gladstone) wanders into
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The aliens have landed and only a good conversation can help us.
me of Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” which took a viral outbreak and made it very commonplace. A science fiction movie that is essentially about the importance of working together should have come across as cheesy and saccharine, but in Villeneuve’s hands it’s hypnotic and distressingly plausible. In this current social and political climate, it’s a message we would do best to hear. Adams, Renner and Forest Whitaker are all excellent, but the script and direction both take center stage. Villeneuve is much more interested in setting up tone and mood than creating typical sci-fi thrills and action. It’s a night class being taught by an exhausted young lawyer (Kristen Stewart). Even though the class is completely useless to her, the ranch hand continues to go, twice a week, just to have dinner with the teacher after class. Watching these two disparate strangers try to connect becomes a slowly escalating exercise in heartbreak. Kelly Reichardt might not be a name that is very familiar outside of the arthouse world, but since 2006 she has made a solid string of quiet masterpieces. “Old Joy” took a serene trip with Bonnie “Prince” Billy into the Cascades. “Wendy and Lucy” is an emotionally brutal film about hitting rock bottom, that plumbed unseen depths in Michelle Williams. “Meek’s Cutoff ” takes place in the High Desert, following an ill-fated trip down the Oregon Trail. Most recently, “Night Moves” follows three environmentalists who plot to destroy a dam. “Certain Women” sits with Reichardt’s earlier work perfectly, another example of her profound talent for capturing the tiny moments in people’s
a very thoughtful film and the third act twist begs the viewer to go back for a second look at what has come before. “Arrival” is slow paced, methodical and demands to be seen. The thematic content alone is enough to make this film one of the most important movies of 2016. Just go into it aware that you’re going to love it or hate it. There’s no room for middle ground. SW "Arrival"
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Dir. Denis Villeneuve Grade: ANow playing at Old Mill Stadium 16 & IMAX and Sisters Movie House
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It’s a very thoughtful film and the third act twist begs the viewer to go back for a second look at what has come before. emotion wrapped up in a big third act twist that the marketing campaign has done an admirable job not giving away. “Arrival” stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a linguist who is brought on by the U.S. military to try to communicate with an alien race that has touched down in a dozen locations. She teams up with sexy scientist Jeremy Renner (basically playing a cross between Jeff Goldblum’s characters in “Independence Day” and “Jurassic Park”), a theoretical physicist there to use numbers to reach the aliens if
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Banks fails to decode their incredibly complicated language. That’s really all I should tell you, since watching the twists slowly unfurl is part of the joy of “Arrival.” This is a heady science fiction drama about language and communication. Audiences after something with more action and spectacle will leave sorely disappointed, as this is much closer to “Contact” and “Interstellar” than “War of the Worlds.” Discovering the purpose of the aliens is the entire thrust of the film, which, even after the final reveal, leaves enough openended to encourage some fascinating speculation.
Kristen Stewart is surprisingly nuanced.
lives. Each character in “Certain Women” is alone, whether physically or emotionally isolated. “Certain Women” just skims along the surface of true loneliness, but it’s deep enough of a glance to carry an uncommon weight. The film might require some patience, but don’t we all sometimes? SW "Certain Women"
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Dir. Kelly Reichardt Grade: ANow playing at Old Mill Stadium 16 & IMAX
VOLUME 20 ISSUE 46 / November 17, 2016 / THE SOURCE WEEKLY
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he perfect distillation of the movie “Arrival,” as well as that of the last year in politics, happened when I watched the film and the closing credits rolled. Just as the film ended, someone several rows behind me started cheering and applauding while another person sitting in close proximity to them began booing. Then everyone started laughing and all was right with the world. That is about as accurate of an assessment of “Arrival” as it’s possible to get. No one will shrug their shoulders and offer a sigh of ambivalence to the film. This is a love-it-orhate-it motion picture, with some big