THE ARRIVAL is one of the earliest Hollywood films made to cash in on the success of THE X-FILES on TV, telling of astronomer Charlie Sheen who becomes convinced that he and he alone has detected an alien signal from deepest space. After a slightly slow introduction, the film picks up pace in its depiction of a large-scale conspiracy, an alien invasion done in a different style to most.I remember seeing and enjoying this film soon after release, even though it's only mid budget and features early CGI effects work which hasn't really stood the test of time. Something about it is endearing despite the faults; Sheen's heartfelt performance, perhaps, or the film's sense of paranoia which in some ways rivals the best this genre has to offer. The backwards legs effects still look great two decades on, and the reliable character actor Ron Silver gets to deliver a wonderfully sinister villainous performance. Don't bother with THE SECOND ARRIVAL, though, it just isn't of the same calibre.

Ilana Green (Lindsay Crouse) examines a green field in the middle of the frozen Arctic. Her research is being blocked but she discovers a rapid climate change underway. Zane Zaminsky (Charlie Sheen) and Calvin (Richard Schiff) working a radio telescope discover a signal from 14.6 light years away. It goes away before confirmation. Their NASA JPL boss Phil Gordian (Ron Silver) cuts the program claiming budget cuts. Then he destroys the data and blackballs Zane. The only job he can get is installing TV satellites. His marriage to Char (Teri Polo) is under stress. Using satellite dishes, he creates a personal radio telescope to search for the signal with the help of nosy neighbor kid Kiki. Both Green and Zaminsky zero in on a Mexican location.This is a nice paranoid conspiracy alien invasion movie. I like Sheen's side of the story. I doubt that both investigations would lead to the exact same place. Climate science isn't that precise. As for assassination attempts, crushed by a bathtub is one of the most unusual and laughable. It seems so much easier and more common to simply shoot them. However, I do really like the black hole metallic spheres.After a really good first half, the movie starts to run into problems. It's still pretty good. David Twohy is most notable for the Riddick franchise. He needs to simplify the second half and ramp up the action. It tries to be too cute with the story. The movie needs to end in Mexico or else there is an obvious simpler way for Zane to expose the conspiracy.

I like sci-fi and while perusing movie offerings in that genre, ran across The Arrival. The movie has an interesting premise: we Earthlings are heating up our world by creating man-man (anthropogenic) greenhouse gases. Aliens arrive who have a way of masking their true bodies with a device that allows them to appear human. They can live in high heat that would be unpleasant, if not lethal, to a normal human being. And because human beings clearly do not deserve Earth because we're destroying it by overheating it, the aliens arrive to artificially heat up the atmosphere even more with greenhouse gases to kill us all off. One must remember the movie came out in 1996. At that time skepticism on a wide scale existed regarding the effects of global warming, which more correctly should be called: more extreme global climate change.All this being said, the movie is riddled with weak points. First there is the chief character, Zane Zaminsky (Charlie Sheen). I first saw Sheen perform in Olive Stone's Platoon (1985) and thought he did a credible job. At that time I thought he might even turn out as good as his dad (Martin Sheen). That of course didn't happen. In The Arrival he plays a perpetually excited and fearful radio astronomer based at a NASA-operated installation whose mission is to try to detect radio signals coming from outer space signifying an alien civilization (SETI). Zane detects something that convinces him this is "the" signal and tries to convince his boss, Phil Gordian (Ron Silver), that he received a message from aliens. Gordian pooh-poohs it and gets rid of Zane. Zane being fired, he shoots out on his own. Zane has issues with his girlfriend, Char (Teri Polo), who doesn't see the big picture like Zane sees it. Zane meets a young black kid, Kiki (Tony Johnson), who helps with his enterprise. With his jerry-rigged apparatus Zane detects a signal identical to the one he got before, except that it's not coming from outer space. It's coming from somewhere in Mexico. He shoots down to Mexico and bumps into a climatologist there (Lindsay Crouse) who also knows something's up. Meanwhile it turns out Gordian is an alien-in-disguise and sends two alien-in-disguise goons to destroy Zane's apparatus. Zane finds the alien nest in a privately-operated plant in Mexico (it turns out there are many of them located in third-world countries). The company is supposedly involved in legitimate electrical generation but in reality it's generating instead vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Zane gets rid of the aliens in the plant. The climatologist is killed off by hordes of black scorpions planted in her hotel room by one of the aliens. Zane journeys back to NASA headquarters in LA and confronts Gordian and his goons. He eventually triumphs over the aliens and warns Kiki (who it turns out is also an alien) that their game is over and to tell his masters to send no more aliens to Earth.Good points: I found the depiction of the aliens convincing as was the premise. Bad points: The script was wooden and the acting was mediocre. Summary: OK for a rental movie if you need a sci-fi fix. Not a $12-at-the-theater kind of movie.5/10

No spoilers...ever...It's a really fun movie with a cast that did a fine job of making it feel right. Is that the acting of the directing? Who freaking cares, it's fun.While there are a handful of what could be 'action' scenes it is the characters and plot itself which made this a fun watch to me. I won't do the spoiler thing but if you want a bit more thinking and less blowing stuff up then you'll enjoy this. Some action, interesting characters, nice plot twists plus who doesn't like a good conspiracy theory type of flick? My reviews are usually short since it's how I felt a movie rather than dissecting the minutiae. For me movies work or they don't sometimes it's action but almost always it's about the story for me, So that's where my reviews come from...