District 9

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Amberly, Michael

My number one film from 2009. Love it.

Look I get the documentary/found footage style pisses people off and theres a lot of crap done with it but I love it, especially when it's high concept genre stuff where it's used to sell the reality of the fantastic. Also I can appreciate all the hard work to track and composite visual effects onto footage shot like that.

Well this one is a very overt metaphor. But what's sneaky about this is that although the hand held cameras are kept throughout the film,. the actual documentary style slowly bleeds out until it's pretty much a sci-fi action film. The action set pieces in the last third of the film are a lot of fun and Neill Blomkamp must have been like a kid in a toy store making this.

The aliens are done so well here, extraordinarily impressive. Better still are their weapons that are all kinds of cool. But best of all is Sharlto Copley and his character arc over the course of the film. It's a melancholic story and one that leaves you begging to find out what happens next.

I can't believe we have to wait another year before we get something else out of Blomkamp, I'm really intrigued by what he's done here and eagerly await his next project.