Arrival

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay  Eric Heisserer, based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang
Starring:  Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma
Running Time:  116 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction

Twelve giant objects appear floating above apparently random places around the globe.  Linguist Dr. Louise Brooks (Adams) and theoretical physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Renner) are called in to investigate an object hovering above Montana.  As they try and find a way to communicate with the alien creatures inside, the international situation quickly deteriorates into fear and panic, and it becomes a race against time to discover the alien's purpose before global war breaks out.

If your a fan of science-fiction, then you have likely seen about a million and one films about aliens arriving on Earth, or humans discovering aliens in outer space, and almost immediately being able to communicate with them.  This film shows how difficult communication would likely be.  If humanity was to encounter an alien race, their terms of reference, the way their minds would work, would be so different to ours, it would be extremely difficult to find any common ground.  This is not an action-packed alien invasion film, it is serious-minded science-fiction dealing with big issues such as the nature of time and memory, communication between species, human aggression and connection.  There are shades of films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind  (1977) and Interstellar (2014) but this is very much it's own film.  There is at least one element at the end that felt a little pat, but this is a minor quibble, and this remains one of the best science-fiction films of recent years, mixing suspense, food for thought and emotion.  It benefits from some incredible performances with Amy Adams proving that she is one of the greatest actresses working today.

Amy Adams in Arrival

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Year:  2011
Director:  Brad Bird
Screenplay:  Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, based on the television series Mission:  Impossible created by Bruce Geller
Starring:  Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton
Running Time:  133 minutes
Genre:  Spy, thriller, action

After escaping from a Russian prison, secret agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), a member of the top secret Impossible Mission Force, finds himself pitted against a ruthless terrorist (Michale Nyqvist) who has stolen the codes to launch Russian nuclear missiles and plans to use them to start an all out nuclear war.  However Hunt has the aid of Jane Carter (Patton) who has her own personal reasons for targeting the terrorist group, computer specialist Benji Dunn (Pegg), and IMF chief analyst William Brandt (Renner).  However Hunt and his team have been set up to take the blame for an attack on the Kremlin, and the US Government have instituted a "Ghost Protocol", which effectively means that they have disavowed all knowledge of Hunt and his team's existence.

This film is the fourth movie to be spun off from the popular Mission:  Impossible TV series which ran from 1966 to 1973, and is best enjoyed as a ride.  Shown in the IMAX format it is a delirious range of spectacular action set pieces, however it does get bogged down in the dialogue scenes.  It's full of narrow escapes and miraculous survival, however while the film is running it's too entertaining to really bother with plot details.  The movie is like a James Bond film.  It sets out to give the audience an entertaining ride with plenty of action and stunts and special effects and it succeeds in that.  The cast are engaging enough, especially Simon Pegg who injects warmth and humour into his part as newly minted agent Benji Dunn.  The main problem is that the storyline plays a little too much like a video game, and the villains never really make much of an impression.
It's an entertaining, enjoyable movie and it's a lot of fun.

Tom Cruise wishes he had taken the stairs in Mission:  Impossible - Ghost Protocol.