It's going to be difficult to write a review for this one without mentioning spoilers, because a large part of the film is a spoiler, but I'll try. If you plan on watching it, maybe give this post a miss in case I accidentally give something away. #[Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g) - This trailer actually gives away too much of the story imo, so be warned. ##Brief Synopsis Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner (AKA the poor man's Jason Bourne, AKA the bow guy from the Avengers that nobody really cares about) lead a research team with the goal of communicating with aliens that have arrived on Earth for unknown reasons. ##The Good I knew absolutely nothing going into this film, except that it involved aliens. I was expecting some kind of Battle Los Angeles bullshit, but it actually has a bit more depth than that. In some ways it is a little bit similar to Interstellar. Explaining the good aspects of the film is going to be difficult because the good part is the storyline, which I can not go into too much or I will ruin it completely. Suffice to say, the general plot of the film is quite interesting and it is worth watching just for a fresh take on the "Independence Day" genre. It's one of those ones like Fight Club where you can only watch it once and then it is sort of ruined. ##The Mediocre The acting is nothing to rave about. In fact, you could argue that the aliens have more of a personality than some of the characters in this film. Directing is basically the same. Nothing is particularly horrendous, but on the whole it is pretty standard and not that interesting. It is quite hard to keep track of the timespan the film actually takes place in. Time seems to speed up and slow down all the time, without any clear indication as to how much time has actually passed since they started trying to talk to the aliens. Computer wizards did a good job with all of the alien stuff, that all looks fine, but it isn't going to blow minds. The soundtrack is completely nondescript too, I watched the film about 3 days ago and I can't even recall what it was like. ##The Bad The cool storyline hook is undermined by a couple of things in the film that do not make sense. I'm going to go into these because it is not really a big spoiler and has nothing to do with the plot as a whole. Amy Adams is some kind of language professor working at a university, and after the aliens land, this army guy shows up out of nowhere, plays her a recording of the aliens and says he needs her to translate what they're saying. The reason given for this is that Amy Adams helped out with translating some Farsi a couple of years ago to help the US army kill some Iraqi terrorists. Because of this, she has some kind of security clearance which means she can be told about the aliens. This bullshit is never expanded upon or revisited at any point during the entire film. It is a clunky piece of exposition that they only shoved in there because they couldn't think of a better way for her to go and try to speak with the aliens. The same army guy (Forest Whitaker) pesters Amy Adams and knock-off Jason Bourne throughout the entire film saying they're not making progress with talking to the aliens fast enough. This is also another bullshit device that is only used to push the storyline forward and makes no sense at all. Firstly, _because they are trying to communicate with fucking aliens_ and it's going to take some time. Secondly, because it would make no sense to scrap all of the progress that Amy Adams has made just to get someone else to try and do it faster. After all, that would require finding someone else with the proper "clearance" too, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. #Rating Rotten Tomatoes: 94% PMYA's Rating: 80% The RT percentage is way off the mark on this one. There are too many problems with the film for me to even think about giving it a 90+. However, I am a fan of this kind of sci-fi and I'm willing to overlook a lot of stuff if the film delivers something interesting, and it did, for me anyway.