District 9
August 19th, 2009Several people have been suggesting that I should see District 9.
The closest movie theater is about a two hour drive from where I live, and I don’t know if District 9 is showing there. (Our local, uh, movie theater, The Swamp Palace, closed down.)
I’ll add the film to my Fatso queue and I’ll be able to watch it someday when it’s released on DVD. (Fatso is a New Zealand version of Netflix.)
If you want to discuss the film, go for it in comments.
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It wasn’t that great. I say it’s a rental. Sort of a Sci Fi Apartheid story. Starts too slow and leaves wide gaps for a sequel. No big spooky parallels, just eye candy.
Watching the crooks on Wall St. is much more riveting.
I’d prefer an imdb.com reference. It has spoiler alerts.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/
Just saw it; it wasn’t a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it had plenty of good moments in it. Obviously, a lot of time and money were put into the mechanics of it, but again, not enough were put into the plot.
I find it hilarious that film studios can put together all kinds of sophisticated techno-wizardry that requires hundreds of eggheads working in perfect harmony, but a coherent script that derives from a plot that actually makes LOGICAL sense, that seems to be increasingly rare.
Still, it was worth watching for the eye candy, and for the lead actor’s performance, as well as satire of government actions.
I recommend “The Hurt Locker.”
I rather liked it. Hadn’t seen any of the pre-release hype, was just looking for a movie to watch last weekend.
It was good, like The Matrix or Blade Runner good. Maybe I’m just shallow or vapid, but the pseudo-documentary beginning pulled me in, the lead characters were intriguing, and the fight/chase scenes that make up the last third of the movie were well worth the ticket price by themselves. 🙂
The plot issues are arguable in my opinion. The way the movie’s framed, I’m not expecting some grand socio-economic commentary or a great work of fiction; but it does excel at showing all the facets of human behavior when faced with the unexpected.
The thing that kept going through my head was – if something like this actually happened, would people act like this? – well, yes. Par for the course for humanity.
If you’re interested to see the look & feel of the movie, look for “Alive in Jo’burg”, a 6-minute short on the same concept released by Neill Blomkamp in 2005 that prompted Peter Jackson to recruit him as a director. The movie’s not exactly the same, but it’ll give you a rough idea of what to expect.
It was a horrible movie. Not worth driving even 10 minutes or spending $11.50 per ticket + parking. It was one of “those” movies that seem to be meant to induce fear or get us use to the idea that we’re the hunted and doomed. I waited through the entire movie in hope of some redeeming message.
There was no such message.
The only thing I can think is Peter Jackson must have been desperate to do something:
Operation Hollywood
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8071178277073763777
Why is it there’s never any reference with the ’80’s film Alien Nation? I know nothing about this film, but the plot-line “aliens are treated like third-world citizens” is exactly the plot of Alien Nation. Which wasn’t a bad flick, BTW….a great sci-fi comment on prejudice. Mandy Patinkin certainly had his moments off-Broadway…