District 9

Well, I know I just posted my review for Friday the 13th, but now I am going to review a good film. A film that you, the reader, voted for me to review. That’s right, I’m finally reviewing District 9. And you know what? In honor of the Academy Awards and District 9's inclusion in the Best Picture category, I have decided that between now and March 7th, I’m going to review all the movies that are up for Best Picture. At least I’ve reviewed Avatar, A Serious Man and Inglourious Basterds. Now I’ve got District 9 done, so that leaves The Blind Side, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up and Up in the Air.

So, District 9. I remember seeing the preview for District 9 when I went to see Terminator Salvation and I remember thinking that it definitely looked interesting, and that I would give it a chance, but that I doubted it would be any good. At least it had Peter Jackson producing.

Well, I went and saw District 9 in theaters with my friends Andrew and Eric and I loved the first half, I truly did. I loved the documentary feel of this film; it gave it a big touch of realism. But then, it felt almost like we were thrown into a war movie like Saving Private Ryan and I wasn’t sure what to think, and I honestly hated people laughing when people were exploding, it took away from the vibe of the film in my opinion. So, I left the theater disappointed.

So, the other day I rented and watched District 9 again, and I must say, I was much more impressed by it the second time without people laughing at everything. The battle in the film felt like it should be there and it fit quite well.

Well, I guess I should talk about the plot a little bit. At the beginning we are introduced to Wikus, a worker for District 9. District 9 is a refugee camp where a group of aliens are being kept. You see, in the film we’re told that there was an alien space craft that came to Earth, specifically Johannesburg, Africa, and kind of broke down, trapping the aliens here on Earth. The aliens, known as Prawns, just want to fix their ship and go home, but the humans won’t let them leave.
So, the humans are working on basically evicting the aliens out of District 9 and into a different district which is more cramped and a lot worse, and Wikus is one of the workers getting the aliens to agree to move out of District 9.

Wikus comes across a prawn who is working on a small pod to the prawn mother ship, so that he can help them all go back home, and Wikus tries to get him to leave, unaware of the pod hidden under the earth, and he gets sprayed by alien fuel and starts feeling sick. He then goes home and he finds out that his arm is slowly turning prawn-esque.

Well, I really don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s definitely a great film, it just took me a second watching to realize that, so don’t be too hard on it the first time around.

The plot was fantastic, I really hope I explained it well enough, the editing was almost perfect. Maybe it was the fact that this film felt real that I really didn’t notice any editing problems.

Overall, it was a really good film, and I can honestly say that I’m glad it’s nominated for Best Picture. I don’t think it has the quality to win, but it was definitely still great. I give it 9 out of 10.