20 Greatest Movie Moments Of The 2010s
2. Arrival: The Future
Arrival is not just one of the finest films of the decade, but it also has its finest plot twist.
It opens with the deeply distressing revelation that Dr Louise Banks has lost her daughter to illness, but there's a lot more to it. Arrival depicts Louise's efforts to communicate with some aliens that have arrived on earth. It turns out these aliens are actually benevolent and want to help humanity by giving them the ability to experience memories of the future.
After a Chinese general plans to attack the spacecraft (unaware of their true purpose), Louise uses the memories of the future to persuade him to call off the attack. She then starts a relationship with fellow linguist Ian (Jeremy Renner) and, even though she knows her daughter will die and that Ian will leave her once he realises that she knew, she decides to have a child anyway, choosing the journey over the destination.
This entire climax and subsequent resolution is masterful, stunningly powerful cinema on every conceivable level and it's a brilliantly emotional, poignant ending you'll be thinking about for days and days, especially since it forces you to consider an impossible dilemma.