20 Best Science Fiction Movies Released Since 2000

13. Arrival (2016)

Denis Villeneuve has made a name for himself in science fiction across the past decade plus change, and any one of his genre films, from Kafkan thriller Enemy to international blockbuster Dune, would sit comfortably on this list. But our pick is Arrival, a film that bridges Villeneuve's smaller and larger films, occupying a space where big stars meet big ideas, with a mid-size budget and a story that leaves all the right questions. 

Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are linguist Louise Banks and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly, brought in by the US Army to communicate with extraterrestrial craft whose presence threatens the tense balance and stability between global superpowers. Through careful study and a gradual forming of connections with the aliens inside the large, pod-like ships, the pair come to understand the creatures’ purpose: to help humanity achieve peace and advance their technology now, in return for help they will need from us in the future.

Arrival relishes the opportunity to take its time and establish a new kind of alien. Throughout the film the real threat is humanity, with our impatience and warlike tendencies coming to the fore in the face of a species who seek communication and dialogue across virtually unbridgeable boundaries. And it is the idiosyncratic construction of these complex beings and the attention to detail in using linguistics, science and multiple forms of representation and communication to decode their intentions that set the film above its generic contemporaries.