Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 6, 2017

Steven Spielberg may have already made the definitive alien contact movie with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Director Denis Villeneuve's (Sicario) Arrival does its best to challenge for that title. Arrival depicts first contact with the usual support structure bits and pieces -- like breathless gatherings around frenzied newscasts -- but it's quick to move beyond the media sensationalism surrounding the aliens' arrival and focus on the core story of a linguist whose discovery -- and the audience's discovery -- may be more substantial than merely cracking alien code or finding a way to communicate with a newly arrived intelligent species. The film further explores man's individual and collective reaction to change, uncertainty, doubt, and fear, but it's a core human story of awareness, understanding, choice, consequences, and coming to understand the real meaning of life and love. Without spoiling the film, its greatest impact comes in the form of self-reflection, acceptance, an understanding of fate, and, really, what it means to live and be alive.

Close Encounters of the Oscar Caliber Kind.

Linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is taken by helicopter to a remarkable sight: a visiting alien spacecraft. It's situated itself in a remote corner of Montana, one of a dozen located around the globe, arranged in a seemingly random pattern. She and Theoretical Physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) have been recruited by Colonel GT Weber (Forest Whitaker) to ascertain the answer to one simple question: "why are they here?" Banks finds almost immediate success communicating with the aliens. They appear friendly, if not keeping their intentions a mystery. As she works to decipher their unique form of written communication and discover her own purpose in the aliens' contact with Earth, the world's nations and militaries grow increasingly impatient and prepare for war.

The film begins modestly with a quick and efficient and vital characterization followed by an eerie urgency of panic and fear. An alarm blares in a school. Security emerges en masse. Fighter jets zoom overhead. The mere presence of something different changes the world, exciting it, terrorizing it, shutting it down, and with the potential to bring out the best or worst man has to offer. The film rarely slows down from there. Villeneuve's craftsmanship keeps the intensity high in the first act, particularly as the film uses perspective in one place and sounds in another to fascinate and terrify the audience at the same time, revealing a literal alien world with different physical laws and characteristics, punctuated by startling music that elicits feelings of excitement, doubt, and fear all at the same time.

Even as the film follows with a series of scenes that feature Louise attempting to communicate with the aliens, wanting to understand, first, how they perceive written communication and, later, deciphering what it means, the film still pushes towards that singular question: why? Why are they here? Communication is, at first, a barrier, the most obvious one, but so too is the very concept of human perception. Again without spoiling the film, Arrival proves to be much more than a simple back-and-forth between two species, more than the process of sorting through their written communication and appropriately translating it. It dives into some heady territory and some deep philosophical and psychological concepts along the way, too, particularly as so much is revealed in the third act. Hints, or things that could be interpreted as hints, are laced throughout. The visiting ships appear almost egg-like. The aliens' written language is, at its most fundamental level, circular in nature. Are those clues or coincidence? Something to keep in mind while watching the movie.

If one could levy a criticism around the film, it would not be of the film itself, but rather its audience. It might be that man isn't quite ready to tackle the concepts it has to offer. They're hard, not in a way that the audience cannot decipher them, but hard in that it breaks down established and understood reality. It resonates and surprises in its own linear progression, but beyond that is a film that enters some exciting but at the same time terrifying areas that challenge the very notion of life as man has known it, thought of it, written of it, since he was able to wrap his head around it. The movie is about how man communicates not only with an alien race, but with himself. On a superficial level, Arrival banks on the excitement and terror of the unknown, the process of coming to understand the unknown, and its twist reveal in its final act. Yet it's so much more, a serious bit of art that does what so few examples of art do today: challenge. It will challenge the way people look at life and its progression, the way things work, and how humans perceive them to work. And it's hard. It could be argued that it's too emotionally hard to think of life in the way Louise comes to see it. The movie makes it accessible and, frankly, relatively simple, but the core concepts are pretty mind-blowing. All that said, it's a fantastic movie, very well conceived, and almost perfectly executed all-around (including a standout performance from Amy Adams). It's definitely a film worth re-watching both in an effort to pick up on any hints that point to its twist, better understand various context clues that link linguistics with the twist, make new thematic discoveries, feed on the challenge of better understanding all it has to say, and to simply enjoy watching it all unfold again.

Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

Arrival isn't a movie made for expressive visuals. As noted in the review of the 1080p Blu-ray, the movie is seriously drab, offering precious little in the way of standout color, visual depth, or frame dimension. The digital image is very flat, and all of these qualities carry over to the UHD, though there are some differences. The film retains its general appearance -- cold, devoid of significant colors -- but it is proficient in presenting its wares with a satisfactory level of detail and, within the film's parameters, colors. Of note is that the image does boast a decent sense of improved warmth. Look at a scene around the 10:50 mark that sees Louise watching the news coverage, just as Colonel Weber is arriving in her office. The UHD, with its HDR-enhanced colors, offers a greater sense of color nuance and depth, warming the flesh tones and accentuating the red hair, though without sacrificing the dark, absorbing nature of the scene. The 2160p presentation, which is reportedly an upscale from a 2K digital intermediate, offers a boost in general detailing, too. Her hair is more finely revealing, the skin is a touch more complex at medium distance, and the image is appreciably, but not significantly, sharper into the background as far as the books and as close as the clothing and chair details.

That scene is a bit dark, representative of much of the movie, but the subtle boosts are more apparent in slightly better light and contrast. Look at the 48:37 mark (the screenshot below, in fact). Ian is dressed in white, the orange hazard suit behind him, contrasted against a dark gray background. His face is significantly more complex on the UHD. It's a startling difference, really. Stubble and pores receive a fairly serious boost in definition. The skin changes from a milky, creamy color to one that has more depth, but doesn't push red or any other color. It's "fuller." The orange, too, is deeper, more richly vibrant compared to the Blu-ray, which is startlingly bland in comparison. Such qualities define the entirety of the visual experience. The added resolution lifts the transfer mildly at worst to significantly at best while colors are much more impactful but still very reserved and respectful of the movie's intended tone. Arrival is a good UHD, even upscaled. It doesn't betray the movie's bleak style and turns one that doesn't immediately stand out as one that would benefit from the format and gives it a healthy upgrade.

Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Arrival is curiously absent a Dolby Atmos soundtrack (even on this UHD) which, with the movie's sound structure and priorities, would have seemed only fitting and likely to enhance the experience. Nevertheless, Paramount's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless presentation never struggles to do the movie's sonic needs justice. The opening minutes deliver a healthy, panicked, war-footing type of audio barrage. Alarms blare in the background, car horns and confusion litter the stage, and fighter jets zoom through. A helicopter powers towards the listener a few minutes later. Rotors are heavy and the sound from both outside inside are strikingly immersive. Deep, penetrating lows signal key moments that are equal parts exhilaration and fear. Bass does get a bit rattly at the very bottom, but some of the more pronounced powerings are wonderfully realized and deeply penetrating with amazing full-stage immersion. More traditionally sourced music enjoys positive spread and balanced surround detail. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized. It enjoys natural center positioning for the duration.

Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Arrival contains five featurettes, all of which can be found on the included Blu-ray disc. No unique 4K bonus content is available. A UV/iTunes digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Xenolinguistics: Understanding Arrival (1080p, 30:03): A look at the source story, core human themes, the challenges and process of bringing the story to the screen, casting, creating realistic characters within their fields of expertise, alien ship and being design, costumes, alien language construction, and Denis Villeneuve's work.
• Acoustic Signatures: The Sound Design (1080p, 13:59): A discussion of the film's use of sound, its positioning as a character in the film, what it represents, technical details of the sound design, and more.
• Eternal Recurrence: The Score (1080p, 11:24): As the title suggests, this piece offers a fascinating discussion of how the music was made and why it compliments the story and tone.
• Nonlinear Thinking: The Editing Process (1080p, 11:20): An in-depth discussion of the movie's editing process and, like the music piece, it discusses rather intelligently how the process makes and enhances the film.
• Principles of Time, Memory, & Language (1080p, 15:24): The most engaging of the extras, this piece explores some of the core story nuance through multiple scientific prisms.

Arrival 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Arrival is a terrific film. It's smart. It doesn't engage in needless characterization, it doesn't bank on the sensation, it doesn't expend energy not required of it. It's sophisticated but accessible, a deep thinking man's film that opens itself up to a variety of interpretations, challenges, and has the potential to resonate with audiences who give it serious thought. It's more stable than Interstellar, more grounded than Contact. It certainly approaches Close Encounters, and perhaps considering its greater focus and sense of purpose, maybe it is the better film. There's no right or wrong answer, but the movie certainly makes for a terrific watch and represents a breath of fresh air in a stuffy landscape of repurposed and largely mindless cinema. Paramount's UHD release makes for a pleasantly surprising upgrade over the Blu-ray, surprising considering that the movie, stylistically, doesn't immediately jump out as one that would see marked improvement. It can be fairly drastic, even while maintaining the film's base integrity, and this is definitely the way to watch for those who can. Highly recommended.