The Arrival (1996)

(Second Viewing, On TV, January 2020) A perennial fixture on “underrated science fiction films of the 1990s” lists, The Arrival is still quite good a quarter of a century later. Charlie Sheen, yes, plays a goateed astrophysicist, double yes, who stumbles into a grand conspiracy after catching a radio signal from outer space… and then another one from Earth. It’s handled as a paranoid thriller, but with some real invention to it, and it features good set pieces, whether intellectual (building a listening network out of consumer satellite dishes) or action-driven (collapsing radio telescope!) I’m also quite fond of the opening shot and how it ties into the ultimate plot, which has aliens deliberately causing global warming in order to terraform Earth for their purposes—a little hook that seems even more interesting as of 2020. It’s all executed with slick competent assurance, with what now feels like a patina of mid-1990s era technology and filmmaking techniques. One day, we’ll need to figure out why writer-director David Twohy never became a more popular or prolific filmmaker. The first half of The Arrival, dominated by SF elements, is more intellectually interesting than the more conventional thriller-dominated second half — but the entire film still plays very well today. I first saw it when it was freshly out on video, but I’m very happy with a belated second viewing: it’s about as good as I remembered it.