Dune director Denis Villeneuve earned his sci-fi spurs almost ten years ago with a genre masterpiece that is now climbing the Netflix charts.
The Netflix charts are always good for a surprise. Of course, new releases that go online with the service often appear in the internal movie ranking. But sometimes a slightly older title makes it into the top 10 that wasn’t even one of the new releases that month. That’s what happened with Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 sci-fi masterpiece Arrival, which reached number 9.
Arrival in the Netflix charts: A modern sci-fi masterpiece
In Arrival, linguistics expert Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is consulted by the US military after twelve mysterious spaceships appear in twelve locations around the world. The seven-legged aliens are not only technologically far superior to us, they also have a completely alien way of communicating, which the world’s language specialists are to decipher. But time is ticking, because some high-ranking individuals say the bizarre visitors have hostile intentions, which could sooner or later end in military attack.
Louise works with the two aliens, whom she calls Albert and Costello, and mathematician Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to solve the linguistic puzzle. But the answer to her questions has unimaginable consequences. At the same time, the expert is haunted by visions of her daughter Hannah, who we see dying of a rare disease at the beginning of the film.
Arrival is based on the sci-fi short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang and is a must-see for anyone who loves contemplative, clever genre fare with minimalist images, big ideas and even bigger feelings. The 8kstreaming community rates the movie with a 7.6 out of 10 after 8000 votes.
This is what the Netflix movie charts currently look like:
- 1st place: Somehow Pregnant
- 2nd place: Chantal in Wonderland
- 3rd place: Shrek
- Place 4: Back in Action
- Place 5: Venom: Let There Be Carnage
- Place 6: Rambo: Last Blood
- Place 7: Shrek 2 – Der tollkühne Held kehrt zurück
- 8th Place: Shrek the Third
- 9th Place: Arrival
- 10th Place: Bogotá: City of Lost
After Arrival, director Villeneuve plunged into the more action-oriented sci-fi sequel Blade Runner 2049 before tackling the ambitious Dune remake. He is currently working on his third film about the desert planet.
