Movie: DISTRICT 9
2009, Directed by Neil Blomkamp
The most intelligent political science fiction I’ve seen since the cancellation of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. This movie was smart, complex, and completely human under the exoskeletons. (How can you not feel awful watching alien (“prawn”) “Christopher Johnson” explain to his son that they wouldn’t be going back home, but instead on to District 10, another tent city sure to become a slum.) The structure of the film, a mix of documentary interviews, cinema verite footage, and straight up action, worked well. Of course, the aliens and effects were spectacular, thanks to Weta Workshop and other VFX houses, and the “District 9” camp had a completely claustrophobic, run-down, desperate quality about it. This movie couldn’t be set anywhere else but South Africa.
Yes, DISTRICT 9 is incredibly loud and SF splatter-y, but even with the sound and the fury, I didn’t feel exhausted and tenderized as I had after watching both TERMINATOR: SALVATION and X-MEN: ORIGINS earlier this year. It is so much more than a “summer movie”. Props to Peter Jackson for taking a chance on an unknown director and his original six-minute short film, Alive in Joburg.
