This was necessary, I think, because the viewers are naturally disgusted by the appearance of these creatures at first. It wasn’t 60 minutes of tease up front before we got to see the creatures. I liked the fact that the aliens were on the screen at the beginning of the film. I did find a few aspects of the film to be annoying, but by and large, I liked a lot more than I disliked. I found myself comparing this to films ranging from _Cloverfield_ to _Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen_ for various reasons…and I preferred _District 9_ considerably over those films. Normally that could be forgiven, but not when the initial concept is this high and absurd. There were parts I really liked, but the execution was just a little off. The thing about films like “Starship Troopers” is that they can make their amusing, manipulative, metaphorical critiques without ever being insulting since they don’t for one second ask you to over-think them. And what’s worse, tons of people will want to indulge this movie in being just that. Not always, sometimes it knew exactly what it was and what it should ask of it’s audience (the humorous, gratuitous violence and great action) and then other times when it actually seemed to think that the obvious, prosaic “critiques” of our culture where some kind of truly challenging, sociopolitical interpretation that should be pondered on like some legitimate form of academic expression. Your almost right Eric, it would fall in line with a long list of fantastic B movie-type productions like “Starship Trooper” and “Day of the Dead” if there weren’t too many parts throughout where I felt like it was asking me to take it too seriously. It was close, but I think that I’m going to say no to “District 9”. Okay, I just got back from this and I’m really conflicted. Check them both out for more takes on this fascinating movie. The script takes swipes at the military and the government and the cinematography-some of it washed out in a blur of simulated VHS-enhances the reality and smooths out the CGI so it blends seamlessly.Īaron Weber from Transbuddha has an expanded rave review here, while contributor Trey Hock offers a counterpoint here. This creates a sense of dread and mystery that lasts throughout the movie. There is a kind of lost hopelessness that permeates these early scenes-mostly shot by “news cameras”-and everyone who is interviewed is talking about Wikus as if we already know what happened to him. There are powerful images of black people calling for the segregation and elimination of the prawns throughout the movie. It’s a big performance for Copley, whose character undergoes a physical and mental readjustment that will drastically change his life in a matter of days. Our hero is a bureaucrat named Wikus van der Merwe (played by Blomkamp’s childhood friend Sharlto Copley), who heads up a mission to evacuate the aliens to another camp. They are confined to a makeshift slum that bears the movie’s title and are treated with open derision and hatred-their shrimp-like features earning them the nickname “prawns.”įrom this simple high-concept premise, Blomkamp starts to tweak things just slightly. “District 9” grounds us in the reality that aliens have lived among humans in Johannesburg, South Africa for 20 years. I’ve always admired how “Cloverfield” used it’s single-camera storytelling device as a way to cut back on budget and employ the less-is-more approach to special effects, but keeping all the action confined to one single viewpoint was sometimes quite limiting (not to mention hard to stomach, thanks to a huge amount of shaky-cam). To his credit, Blomkamp (who expanded the movie from his 2005 short “Alive in Joburg”) reappropriates these old ideas to make something new and fresh. I tried not to get too specific, but as I was watching the movie, there were moments that reminded me very much of other iconic scenes. I’ve attached a slideshow that I made minutes after watching the movie last week as a tribute to its influences.
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