A Night At The Movies With Villeneuve and Heidegger

It's not often that movie reviewers refer to Martin Heidegger and concepts such as "being-towards-death," but this critic managed to reach across the movie aisle and "get serious." I thought of this review last night when I, again, watched Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece "Arrival." Rather than summarize or riff on the review, just read it and give it the reflection you think it merits. I gave it more than a few minutes, but I'm slow on the uptake and getting slower by the week. "Arrival" makes great use of Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight."

Richter's music has featured prominently, and been used to great effect, in other movies and in recent streaming series, including The Leftovers and The Last of Us, and I encourage readers who are not familiar with him to seek out his work. I also liked a much different musical take on "Arrival" that uses a song by the group London Grammar. While it's a different genre, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. . The person who created the music video has some editing "chops." Or, perhaps, I'm just easily amused.