What was great about Arrival:

No bad guy.
It’s about communication.
A lot of beautiful shots.
The aliens are fairly ambiguous.
The score is not telling you how to feel.
There’s a good sense of progress toward achieving the goal that is outlined in the plot.
The actors do a good job of acting. This is important to the film as it makes the plot more believable.

I could keep going on like this, but I don’t think there’s much point.

Arrival is a film that is strong because of the sum of it’s parts.
It was made by someone who knows how to make a film that has substance.
There are a couple of moments that did feel cheap, but overall it is hard to fault as a lot of hard work had gone into it’s making and it paid off well.