Arrival

Arrival is a smart sci-fi movie that is far more about us than it is about the aliens. How do we communicate with aliens? How do we react to them? And, very importantly, how do we trust them when we can't even manage to trust each other?

I highly recommend seeing this movie before the twist gets spoiled for you. Well, twists. There are a few. It is one of those, like Sixth Sense, in which the shock is important for the full emotional impact.

Victor Frankenstein

Are you a fan of the book, or of the movies? If you're a fan of the book, you should know that the writers chose to go with the movie version of Frankenstein. This is pretty immediately obvious, as Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, who doesn't even appear in the book.

And yet, you should watch this anyway. I'm not sure that old Mary Shelley would be proud of this adaptation, but it certainly explores many of the themes she was getting at. It's Gothic horror as it should be. We explore questions of identity, redemption, purpose, and playing God. And we do it through the eyes of two tortured young men, and against a lovely industrial backdrop of nineteenth-century London.