District 9

A few weeks back I went and watch District 9 and it was honestly one of the better movies I have seen in a long time. For those who have seen the previews but have no clue what this movie is about let me explain. in the early 80's a spaceship filled with aliens in flying past earth when it runs out of fuel. The ship comes to a stop over Johannesburg, South Africa. After sitting in the air for a good while the world's governments finally decide that we need to know why they are here and send up some crews to open the ship and see what is going on in the ship. The aliens on board are emaciated and dying. It is decided that the aliens will be given a place to live in South Africa in a area called District 9. As time passes the people that originally lived in the area have had enough of the aliens for various reasons and want them gone. Multinational United (a fictional agency in charge of the aliens) are tasked with moving the aliens from District 9 to the new District 10, this is where the movie starts.

While the movie is slow at times the story is engrossing and by the end you feel for the plight of these aliens and how they are treated. One thing that I loved about this movie was the cut in interviews of people commenting about how they want these unwelcome visitors gone and how they are disrupting their lives. As I later found out all of these interviews are real interviews with people that actually live in the slums shown in the movie and are about the black south Africans commenting about the black Nigerians and Zimbabweans that had come to their area. Gives the film a real deep feeling of hatred that the people feel about the outsiders, in this case the aliens, living among them.

The main actor in this movie is someone that I personally have never seen in anything I have ever watched, yet he blew me away with his performance. As times progress things breakdown for him and he conveys every bit of that breakdown through his actions and behaviors.

Finally I wanted to make a comment on Neill Blomkamp. This is his first big directing gig and he did a phenomenal job. This movie originally started out and the pre-shoot for the Halo movie but the studio pulled the plug. So Peter Jackson came along and told Neill we are already here lets just make a movie regardless and boy am I glad they did. This was a great breakthrough directing gig and puts Blomkamp on the map as far as I am concerned.