District 9

I’ll say up front that it's a better 4 stars, because I'm still a bit bleary eyed. It was there, what people are like. There was action. There were powerful weapons. There were interesting aliens. It was cool X-D I'm so freaked out about it. It's definitely worth a movie ticket. It really was beautifully believable, the documentary style didn't hurt it, at all. Watch it again? Why not. Well, the best part was the use of the "dusting" gun anyway. I guess I'm a weirdo for liking it... In short: I have such a hard-to-describe feeling about this movie, but my cheeks are burning, which means it was good and that I paid maximum attention. (09/16/2009)

In a word: Amazing. In more words: The way that District 9 rubs shoulders with all the recent sci-fi "sensations" like Transformers, Terminator Salvation and, ultimately, Avatar is astounding. I haven't seen such an original film, full of fresh ideas, engagingly shot and, as far as the main character is concerned, superbly acted in a long, long time. It takes more than ordinary talent to make a sci-fi action spectacle that also contains a deep, topical and a very pressing idea. And Neill Blomkamp seems to have plenty of it (Jackson knows who to put his money into). To all this I add the exotic South African setting, the music, the flawlessly made aliens and the documentary style that really draws you into the story... This amounts to five honest, 100% stars. (08/18/2010)

The prawns would probably love Whiskas, but personally I would prefer to pay entrance for a movie that had it clear in its head whether it wants to be a sloppy B sci-fi where the worse it is the better, or E.T., Transformers, Children of Men or War with Newts. I’m not saying that it can’t be combined into one whole, but certainly not by forcibly changing genre every quarter of an hour, forgetting about everything that has come before and shaking a stolen closed circuit camera around like a maniac. I followed the trend presented by Blomkamp and within fifteen minutes I forgot that I had ever seen this movie. (09/21/2009)

One of the smartest movies of the year. It's not so much the idea, but rather the way Blomkamp updated the genre. District 9 has everything one can ask for from dejected offshoots, moreover in a completely sophisticated package. And the idea of using a documentary not only as an authenticating component, but above all as a means of explaining abbreviations, simply deserves recognition. (09/23/2009)

I resisted the seductive call of the DVDrip so I could watch this film for the first time in the cinema, and now I can say that I would have been furious with myself if I had missed it. Neil Blomkamp delivers a great science fiction film, the best in recent years (and what’s nice is that this isn’t the first time this year that I say this, and maybe not even the last, re: Moon and Avatar). I respect the radical style change between the first and second halves, but I loved the first half better because it’s something incredible and never seen before in the genre and in this form. Rather than to Cloverfield, District 9 is more similar to the unknown Japanese horror film Noroi the Curse, which keeps the documentary format uninterrupted for its entire runtime. The events of the second half could not be captured as a “documentary”, that was very clear to me. Even though it reaches its “WOW” peak somewhere at the beginning, the rest of film is so striking and breathtaking that it was a joy to watch. The occasional lapses in the script are easy to ignore – they aren’t as big as I’ve read in some reviews. I recommend it. Edit: The second viewing brings the rating down to four. (09/17/2009)