Arrival, Nocturnal Animals and Allied

Smart and original, Arrival is an interesting take on the alien visitation genre. Writer Eric Heisserer and director Denis Villeneuve have created something different and intelligent from the Ted Chiang novella. Yes, there are all the old issues of various countries having their own ideas about how to cope with the visitors, but the attempts by the Americans at communication were well developed.
Amy Adams is first rate as the language expert, Jeremy Renner less so in a supporting role. Then there is the ending, which is quite a revelation given what we have already seen.

Nocturnal Animals is not for the faint hearted. The  novel that her ex husband leaves Susan (Amy Adams is excellent once again) is shown in live action, and the beginning I found hard to watch. There is an excellent contrast here between the stark, rich and pristine LA home that Adams now inhabits, and the dirty wastes of poor rural West Texas. The interesting thing is, Susan pictures her ex (played by a mesmerising Jake Gyllenhaal) in the role of the distraught father in the story, so we never actually know how much was from his own experience. Much of both stories is about revenge, but we have to wait until the end to see how this works out. Director Tom Ford has made something thrilling and provoking.

I was far more impressed with Allied than many of the critics. How can they be so huffy on an original story and screenplay, we have so few of these. British writer Steven Knight (who wrote Locke, my favourite movie of 2013) has come up with an original World War II thriller that is pacy and twisty along the way. Director Robert Zemeckis has been given a decent budget and the cinematography is superb. I can see that the critics might feel that the all important relationship between Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard lacks chemistry. It does seem that the former's mind was elsewhere whereas Cotillard is great as always. But I thought the movie worked really well and the two hours flew by. I looked out for the parts shot at nearby RAF Halton, although we had to wait well over halfway for the first of three scenes to put in an appearance.