Saturday, August 29, 2009

Sci-fi done right


I know I'm a couple weeks late on the recommendation but District 9 was a great movie. It did what all good sci-fi movies should do, have a great narrative using, well, fictional scientific stuff that's all very relevant to the real world.

If you're totally unawares (which wouldn't be that big of a surprise, the movie is/was kind of a sleeper... no big names attached to it besides Peter Jackson giving it a recommendation), the movie released 9/14/09, was filmed & set in South Africa, and is about aliens inhabiting the nation. The background of the aliens' arrival is explained with faux-news footage from the last 20 or so years chronicling the aliens' eventual placement into a slum given the name, District 9.

I'd heard good things about the movie but still had semi-low expectations because I thought that it was just going to be a fairly one-dimensional statement against apartheid. My expectation was that humans were just going to be mean and throw the nice, ugly aliens out of the city. But the movie was very fair in showing that the aliens were very different than humans, that it wasn't as clear cut case as it could have been, giving the movie more credibility in any sort of "point" it is trying to make. Issues of identity and humane treatment also play into the story but, all done without getting preachy. Finally, the action scenes are summer blockbuster worthy but, surprisingly, the story behind is what, I think, will really give it its lasting appeal.

So there you have it, this movie has my recommendation.

1 comment:

tbarkley said...

It was a good movie. A functional, new twist on the whole alien invasion thing.