Full disclosure: I’m leery of space alien movies where the aliens are non-threatening, such as Contact or Close Encounters (when they are hostile, at least you know there will be action).  I don’t know anything about the aliens, the genre doesn’t lend itself to backstory, and I have tired of the persistent trope of the dewy-eyed scientist versus the steely militarist.   Add to that prejudice my own limitations of imagination and intelligence  – space-time continuum fare has the same effect on me as the math part of the SAT (“C, C, C, C, C, C . . . “) – and you have what you need before reading my take on Arrival.

It’s not bad.  Amy Adams is effective as the grief-stricken linguist brought in to communicate with aliens who hover above the earth, causing worldwide panic, and Jeremy Renner plays her colleague with some verve and the appropriate amount of dew in his eyes.  As the stern military liaison, Forest Whitaker surprises us all by under-acting, and the plot is, at times, engrossing.

It’s not all good either.  It is a dark, dreary film; it gives us the process of communication-through-translation without a shared form of discourse, which is both admirably ambitious and a little boring; and it can be lazy (there is an entirely underdeveloped subplot involving a treasonous act that comes completely out of nowhere; the idea that Sudan and Sierre-Leone have militaries capable of doing much to the aliens is hilarious; and the geopolitical moralizing – “can’t we all just get along?” – silly).

I sense, however that this is a smart film, and likely too smart for me.

Matt Damon anchors this futuristic mash-up of Apollo 13 and Castaway (with a little bit of Gravity thrown in for good measure), and for the most part, the results are positive. Stranded on Mars, Damon must learn to adapt to the planet’s forbidding nature, ingeniously deducing how to grow food, warm himself, and communicate with NASA to effectuate his rescue. This is an Oscar-nominated film and still in the theaters, so I’ll be broad in my comments.

Damon, as usual, elevates a picture. We view him battling the elements and disaster, and he veers between gallows humor, heartfelt wonder when he hits upon an idea that can help him survive, and mental and physical breakdown. He’s a gifted and still, incredibly, underrated actor, too often overlooked. He was the heart of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but everyone was dazzled by Jude Law; he made The Departed tick, but the buzz went to Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and even Mark Wahlberg, who played a stock tough Boston cop and received an Oscar nod for it. In the Coen Brothers re-make of True Grit, Damon near stole the picture, and his smaller part in Contagion was the most affecting.

The film moves rapidly as director Ridley Scott alternates between Damon attempting to survive on Mars and the efforts of NASA to rescue him. While we are with Damon, the picture is consistently compelling. When it reverts to NASA, however, it becomes uneven, pat and pedestrian. It does not help that Jeff Daniels has decided to portray the director of NASA as some sort of mannered Aaron Sorkin archetype. It also does not help that Kristen Wiig is anywhere near this movie (as the director of Public Relations for NASA, she seems to be itching to show us her googly eyes). Finally, Scott is clearly aping Apollo 13 by giving us a picture of the NASA brainiacs as they work to save Damon. Unfortunately, unlike in Apollo 13, the science is less accessible and negatively juxtaposed with what Damon is doing on the planet, where he actually explains to us what he is doing in his daily video logs.

Scott is no stranger to space.  His breakout film, Alien, was set in 2127, where space was industrial, dirty and haunted, and government and corporations conspired to screw the little man. Clearly, he is in a better place today. In 2035, NASA’s kindly counterpart in China subverts its own government to help Damon; the people who work at NASA have a certain blasé “I worked in a Blockbuster and I will never wear a uniform again” mien: and missions to Mars are the kind of endeavors wear crewmates can play kissy face.

My curmudgeonly nits aside, this is very solid entertainment.

The main draws of the first two Hunger Games movies were the thrilling and terrifying nature of the games themselves and the frivolous corruption of the Capitol. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) was our guide, and after her selfless act (volunteering to take her sister’s place in the games), she served mainly as an action hero. As those movies progressed, Katniss became romantically tied to her teammate, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and her tie to him remains strong in this third installment. Unfortunately, this picture has neither games nor Capitol nor action. Instead, there’s a lot of Katniss pining for Peeta.

As the film opens, Katniss is ensconced in a drab underground facility that hides rebels under the leadership of the steely and completely uninteresting Julianne Moore. The primary conflict is whether Katniss will assist the rebels for propaganda purposes, and when she balks because of their hostility towards Peeta, who appears to be a collaborator, it is annoying. When she continues to prove difficult after surveying the carnage wrought against her own district (90,000 dead) and witnessing the Capitol bombing a rebel hospital she had just visited, it is very annoying. Her actions might be better accepted if she didn’t seem so mature; Katniss of the books is a teen while Lawrence is mid twenties.

There are bright spots. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Elizabeth Banks and Woody Harrelson return, providing the film necessary humor and spark. And this is clearly a set-up for what one hopes to be a big finale. Let’s just hope Lawrence doesn’t appear to be in her early 30s, still reluctant to play a featuring role in the rebellion because she is mooning over Peeta.

Alfonso Cuaron’s first feature since 2006 (Children of Men) is both a traditional, seat-of-your-pants thriller and a meditation on isolation and impending death. In the latter category, it more than succeeds. I saw it at an IMAX theater in 3D, and in an era of distraction, I’ve never seen such rapt attention given a film. The stillness of space transported the theater, and understandably so. The visuals are jaw-dropping, and Cuaron depicts space in such a unique manner, both expansive and claustrophobic, the viewer feels lost and vulnerable in the great unknown. At the end, the audience breathed a collective sigh of relief, satisfied but a little antsy to get out on the street. For once, the technological wizardry of Hollywood was employed in sync with the other elements of a film, rather than as it primary recommendation.

Now, I am sure even a lowly NASA intern might look at the technical specifics of the plot and chortle. Astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are working on a space station when debris from a destroyed satellite not only rips through their command but through near every satellite and space station in a line, as if all were posted on the same space highway. The catastrophe leaves them dislocated, and the only way back home is to propel themselves from the U.S. station to a Russiain one to a Chinese one, improvising along the way. Interestingly, of all the leaps the audience has to take, I was most confident you can’t use a fire extinguisher as a jet pack, but dammit if Bullock didn’t do just that, it seemed perfectly plausible while I was watching it, and it is “theoretically possible“. Regardless, niggling about what could and could not happen in real life is an indicator that you should have seen Captain Phillips.

If I have a criticism, it is on the meditation aspect, and even then, it is minor. Not that the film wasn’t well-written. Bullock’s journey from helpless to frantic to resigned to resistant is compelling, and she has collected some gravitas as she’s aged, transforming from spunky to flinty. Clooney, however, is badly miscast. His wisecracking, country music listening solid leader is formulaic, and he communicates a sly grin in even the most dire of circumstances. You need more than a really strong turn as Dennis Quaid in the role.

Still, at 90 minutes, the film doesn’t dawdle, and as solely a visceral joy, it’s one of the best pictures of the year.