Like any arresting science-fiction tale, Denis Villenueve‘s Arrival (Paramount, 11.16) challenges you to stretch your cognitive processes. It’s a workout. It also has a great set-up — a visiting (not an invasion) of earth by 12 super-sized alien vehicles, in various locations around the globe. And a linguistic professor, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who has raised and lost a daughter to disease, tasked by the government (primarily represented by Forrest Whitaker in military fatigues) to somehow communicate with the alien pilots, called Heptapods, to learn where they’re from and what they want.

Sounds cool, no? An atmospherically haunting thing. Creepy images of massive, split-egg-shaped alien vessels hovering just above the earth. Intriguing, fascinating. A cerebral experience of discovery and synapse-expansion. And of course a hero’s journey for Dr. Banks, who’s just about the only person on the engagement team with an intelligent mindset about the visitors, which is that the only way to go is to communicate, exchange knowledge, share, learn.

Jeremy Renner‘s Ian, an open-minded scientist/mathematician, shares Banks’ attitude. And, down the road, his fluids.

Everyone else in Arrival is a lizard brainer — scared, defensive, concerned about threat, preparing a potential attack. And of course the story will be about Banks saving the world from this absurdly militant attitude.

The Heptapods are apparently looking to assess the nature and character of humans and determine if they deserve to survive with the benefit of their long-game altruism or whether it’s better to…what, ignore or even exterminate and thereby save the universe a lot of grief? Something like that.

So Arrival is more or less the original The Day The Earth Stood Still. The basic message is that aggression is for morons. The Heptapods are Michael Rennie‘s Klaatu. Dr. Banks is a combination of Sam Jaffe‘s Professor Barnhardt (a stand-in for Albert Einstein) and Patricia Neal‘s Helen Benson, both of whom come to agree with the message that Klaatu has come to earth to deliver, which is that aggression and violence are unacceptable and that the earth will be destroyed if the militants don’t cool their jets.

Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (Warner Bros., 9.9), which I caught this morning at 10 am, reminded me once again of that Billy Wilder remark about how vitally important story structure is, and how it’s the toughest thing in the world to get right. Sully‘s structure really works. It delivers the “Miracle on the Hudson” saga, drawn from Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow’s 2010 book “Highest Duty”, in a grabby, hopscotchy, time-shifting way. It depicts, as if you didn’t know, Flight 1549, which ended very quickly after Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles landed a smallish US Airways jet on the Hudson due to both engines dying after hitting a flock of birds. The whole episode began and ended within 208 seconds. Sully’s decision to go for a water landing resulted in the saving of 155 lives (i.e., passengers plus crew). The film is tight and efficient (only 96 minutes) and a highly skillful emotional button-pusher. The applause at the Palm theatre was heartfelt and prolonged. And Clint and Hanks showed up for a q & a along with costars Aaron Eckhart and Laura Linney. Tom Hanks seems assured of a Best Actor nomination — everyone seems to be of that opinion. But I’m outta here — have to catch a 7:45 pm screening of Arrival.

(l. to r.) Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks and moderator Rebecca Kegan following this morning’s Telluride screening of Sully.

Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight, which I saw last night at 8 pm, is a gentle, sensitive saga of a gay Miami black dude named Chiron. The story is told in three chapters over a 16-year period. Three actors portray this extremely guarded and hidden soul — Alex Hibbert as the little-kid version (nicknamed “Little”), Ashton Sanders as the teenage version and Trevante Rhodes as the adult version (called “Black”) in his mid 20s.

Moonlight didn’t destroy me or rock my soul, but I was impressed and moved. I admired it as far as it went. I just had to adjust myself to what it is as opposed to the earth-shaker that some have been describing.

Trevante Rhodes during third-act scene of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight.

Jenkins (who has worked for years as a senior Telluride Film Festival volunteer) knows what he’s doing, and the subject, for me, is a unique thing. I’ve never seen a “travails of black closeted gay guy” movie before, and this one quietly works on its own terms.

With Birth of a Nation all but out of the race, will Moonlight take its place as the reigning black-experience Best Picture nominee? Or will Denzel Washington‘s Fences be the champ? Or will they both make the cut? Hard to say. I have no dog in this — I’m just watching and wondering. Moonlight is very quiet and specific and soft-spoken, but it never really builds up a head of steam. Which is fine with me. I respected the quiet, deliberate, soft-spoken scheme.

Message sent to Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg about an article he posted earlier today (9.3) about Telluride’s response to Manchester By The Sea: “At the end of your piece you’ve written that ‘a Best Picture nomination [for Manchester By The Sea] is possible, although it strikes me as an uphill climb since this is a film that is likely to engender respect and admiration more than passion or enthusiasm.’

“I’m reading the words but they’re not sinking in because they so brutally violate my sense of what this film is and how it’s playing. I just came from a 1:15 pm Galaxy screening and this movie is destroying people — it’s a broken-hearted masterpiece — and you’re saying it’s facing a tough haul to land a Best Pic nomination? Especially in this, one the weakest award seasons in recent memory? You’re astonishing, man.”

“Walking away from last night’s Manchester by the Sea screening, I could really only think about Casey Affleck’s face. We all assess the pain of others by studying their faces. How badly are they hurt? How withered have they become? For Affleck’s character, Lee Chandler, what he wants and needs is to be alone in his heartache, but that’s the one thing he can’t have because he’s connected to people who rely on him.

“To go where Affleck goes in Manchester by the Sea is unthinkable. To watch someone endure something most of us could not — the most horrible thing anyone could ever imagine — is not easy. This is a film about the remnants of accidental, sudden loss and how we find people we can count on to help save whatever is left in the wake of it.

“Manchester by the Sea, as you already know from what’s been said about it, is one of the best films of the year. It’s easily Affleck and Kenneth Lonergan’s best work.

“What I saw in Affleck’s face, finally, is what I discovered when I looked and looked. What I saw in my mind when I walked away from it and tried to sleep was Affleck himself imagining that kind of loss. He knows what I know, what any person who has raised a child knows: that there is nothing else you are put on earth to do except take care of that child, or those children. A primal urge and a divine directive. And one that can’t be undone unless you are someone disconnected from it. This is not a film about someone disconnected from it.

It’s 8:57 am with a 10 am Sully screening breathing down my neck. The usual feeling of quiet Telluride desperation is running through my veins. I’m going to have to stop everything and file this afternoon from 3 to 7 pm — best I can do. Last night I saw Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight at 8 pm — a fine, affecting, three-chaptered pain-and-growth saga that, speaking personally, elicited more in the way of respect and aesthetic admiration than full-hearted passion. I haven’t finished the review but this is how Telluride is for guys like me, especially without an iPhone. I also caught Benedict Andrews‘ Una, a screen adaptation of Blackbird (which I saw off-B’way with Jeff Daniels a few years back) with Rooney Mara and HE’s own Ben Mendelsohn in the lead roles. I found it irksome and frustrating (not a minority view) but I haven’t time to go into it now.

The Venice Film Festival reviewers were not wrong — Damian Chazelle‘s La La Land (Summit, 12.2) is a winning, audacious, often delightful Jacques Demy-styled musical for the 21st Century. Some of them added that it’s not quite a fall-on-the-floor great, and they were right about that too. Most of it, in my book, is an 8 or an 8.5. But hold on.

Because the opening song-and-dance-on-the-freeway sequence is a 9.5. And the last 15 minutes are an absolute 10 — they deliver, no exaggeration, one of the best-written and well rendered finales of any non-comedic musical ever. Sad, dazzling, wise and just right. So that makes La La Land better than an 8 or 8.5. Call it a 9.

And Emma Stone‘s performance as a struggling actress, trust me, is an absolute grand-slammer. A Best Actress nomination is 100% locked. Gosling is very good also but she dominates him. A friend who knows this racket thinks the Best Actress race will probably come down to Stone and Viola Davis in Fences.

Take away the songs and the dancing and Chazelle’s bravura direction…a silly thing to say, right? But take those away and La La Land, story- and acting-wise, would be an appealing, well-written, nicely done Los Angeles love story between two aspiring artist-performers in their late 20s — Ryan Gosling‘s Sebastian, a jazz pianist whose passion is too pure to pay the rent with, and Stone’s Mia, an actress who has the goods but has been bombing out at auditions for years, and she’s starting to wither.

But add the songs, dancing and bravura direction and you have…well, a helluva lot more.

The only speed bump, for me, is that Stone has a pleasing but fairly tiny voice (non-problematic but maybe a little above the level of Diane Keaton‘s singing in Annie Hall) and Gosling is no skilled croooner either so you have to accept these limitations. And I did. Speed bumps are finessable, negotiable.

A friend says that the fact that they can’t sing all that wonderfully works for the film — these are real people singing their feelings with real-people voices. I get that, a good point. But I still wanted to better pipes. Just a little.

It’s now 7:55 pm. I have to catch Moonlight, which starts at 8 pm. Did I state that La La Land is a definite Best Picture nominee? It has to be. The thing that gives it character and cojones is that it’s not a “happy” musical. It has the character to end…well, not joyously.

The pugnacious, raspy-voiced Jon Polito, whom I always found a distinctive if somewhat overbearing performer, particularly in his Coen Brothers roles (Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There), has passed at age 65. Sorry. I wish that just once he had played (or that I had seen him play) a calm, mellow type who never yelled. I never knew Polito was openly gay — hilarious. His career got rolling in ’81. He worked like a sonuvabitch on television. Big voiceover guy — he voiced “Conquedor” in the 2011 TV series Thundercats. I sometimes thought of him as am angrier, less thoughtful Danny De Vito. I even had an idea they were roughly the same size…wrong. De Vito is 4′ 10″ — Polito was 5′ 8″.

Having experienced the trauma of last year’s “damp, windswept, bone-chilling Telluride Film Festival patron’s brunch,” I’m thinking I might sidestep the 2016 version, which some are lining up for as we speak. It’s damp and gray out there, and it was flat-out raining an hour or so ago. The special patron’s screening, 2:30 pm at the Chuck Jones theatre, will be La La Land, I’ve been told. Added: There’s a Frank Marshall-produced doc, Finding Oscar, screening tomorrow afternoon, about a “search for justice in the case of the Dos Erres massacre of the ’80s,” etc. 11:05 am Update: Now it’s sunny — maybe I’ll hit the brunch after all.

I truly regretted missing Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle at the end of last May’s Cannes Film Festival. (It’s not like I didn’t ask repeatedly about rue d’Antibes market screenings or any chance to catch it early….stonewall.) Just about every critic loved it. Why isn’t it playing Telluride? It pops a few days hence in Toronto.

I was hugely irked yesterday afternoon, sitting on a doorstep on Telluride’s Colorado Avenue as I berated those Booking.com bozos on a Skype line. I hadn’t eaten anything, the iPhone 6 Plus couldn’t be repaired (the thought of not being able to snap any photos during this festival distress me to no end), the iPhone rental was a no-go, and I’d missed the deadline to pick up my press pass. And then a pretty lady slowed and leaned down and patted my recently bought saddle shoes and gave me a thumbs-up as she kept walking. Thank you. And then Telluride’s press rep Shannon Goodwin Mitchell walked by and saw me sitting there all cranky and pissed off and reached into a bag and gave me my Telluride pass pass…thanks! And then Sasha Stone pulled up with my wallet, which she’d retrieved at the Dolores Mountain Inn. And then four or five hours later I was sitting in Glenn Zoller‘s big, comfortable, well-lighted kitchen and enjoying a Grateful Dead track for the first time in eons. Glenn was listening to KOTO, the local cool-cat FM station, and all of a sudden Bob Weir singing “Satisfaction” put me in the greatest mood. On the worst days the nicest things can happen out of the blue.

Telluride’s vp public relations Shannon Mitchell during last year’s rain-soaked picnic.

Something about Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals hasn’t quite rung Owen Gleiberman’s bell. Some tingly little itch that hasn’t been scratched in the right way. It’s not that he dislikes it, far from it, but it’s not as good, he says, as Blue Velvet or In The Bedroom. And yet he’s calling it “a suspenseful and intoxicating movie — a thriller that isn’t scared to go hog-wild with violence, to dig into primal fear and rage, even as it’s constructed around a melancholy love story that circles back on itself in tricky and surprising ways.

Jake Gyllenhaal in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals.

The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw, on the other hand, has totally flipped for it. “There’s a double-shot of horror and Nabokovian despair in this outrageously gripping and absorbing meta mystery-thriller,” he writes. “It’s a movie with a double-stranded narrative — a story about a fictional story which runs alongside — and it pulls off the considerable trick of making you care about both equally, something I think The French Lieutenant’s Woman never truly managed.

“Clive James once wrote that talk about ‘levels of reality’ never properly acknowledges that one of these levels is really real. That probably holds true. But in Nocturnal Animals, these levels are equally powerful, and have an intriguingly queasy and potent interrelation.

Gleiberman: “With Amy Adams as a posh, married, but deeply lonely Los Angeles artist, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the novelist from her past who finds himself trapped in a nightmare, the movie has two splendid actors working at the top of their game, and more than enough refined dramatic excitement to draw awards-season audiences hungry for a movie that’s intelligent and sensual at the same time.”

Nocturnal Animals, which apparently didn’t make the cut at Telluride but will screen in Toronto next week, “seizes and holds you — with its suspense, and its vision. It leaves no doubt as to Ford’s fervor and originality as a director, and it leaves you hoping that he’ll make his next film before another seven years passes by.”