Oscars: Every Best Picture Nominee Of The 2010s - Ranked Worst To Best

4. Arrival

Arrival Amy Adams
Paramount

One of the hallmarks of this decade has been the fall release of a huge sci-fi film, from Gravity to Interstellar, The Martian to Blade Runner 2049, right up to last year's unfairly overlooked First Man. Arrival, though, is the absolute best of the entire bunch.

Denis Villeneuve takes a short story - 1998's Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang - and makes it into a big screen epic, that also never loses its sense of intimacy. It's a film about an alien invasion, but its greatest strength is its sheer enduring humanity.

Arrival has all the things you'd expect from big sci-fi fare - great visuals, mysterious aliens, the planet at risk - and it sends them sailing out of the park. But where it's truly out of this world is in its message about language, and how we communicate with each other.

It takes a deep dive into this fundamental yet underexplored aspect of life, anchored by Amy Adams on form worthy of winning Best Actress (that she wasn't even nominated is an outrage), giving this film its heart and ensuring that its plot twists land perfectly. It's ambitious, masterful filmmaking; an intelligent, thought-provoking, and beautiful movie that deserves to stand as a sci-fi classic.

JH

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