Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Out on Your Own - District 9 Review



I’ve always thought of myself as extremely independent. I often travel alone and am happy being single. But when I decided to see District 9, a film none of my friends wanted to see, alone…I was opened to a world of loneliness! No doubt many of you will be facing new and exciting prospects, away from home and the norm. Perhaps it isn’t a huge deal to some people, people extremely secure in themselves, a trip to the cinema alone would be a breeze. I have been with friends, family, work and on the rare occasion, an actual date! So, I had a few hours spare and took the opportunity. I asked for ‘One to see District 9’ and the spotty teen behind the counter gave me an unwanted look of sympathy, or perhaps even empathy. I walked in to the almost empty theatre just in time for the trailers. I love the trailers, its like watching 3 months worth of movies! The first one was one I saw in 3D when watching The Final Destination, it was the ‘most expensive movie ever made’ (?) AVATAR. For the first time, I actually watched the trailer, instead of being amazed by the strange blue things feet coming out of the screen! I like the look of it, very fantasy, but it doesn’t tell you ANYTHING about the movie, is it a mad killing spree, is it genetic mutation, is it a romantic film? It doesn’t do its job and falls short of making me want to see this over hyped James Cameron film. The second was a teaser trailer of Saw IV (reviewed in Bullet: Issue 2) which looked really good on the cinema screen, but may not hold the audiences attention for a full length movie. Then, Ricky Gervais appeared on screen, obviously taking tips from his Madagascar star, Ben Stiller by promoting his new movie, The Invention of Lying, himself within the trailer. Gervais is very much a marmite man (love or hate him!) and I have always got his humour, and so LUCKILY I was able to take it as a joke as he said ‘Look at that overweight girl at the front, stop eating sweets, you’ve had enough” and I heard the sniggers and felt the stares of the only other people in the room, two couples (I’m not a model, lets put it that way!) I laughed and pretended to hide in embarrassment. Might as well give them what they want! When I’d got over the humiliation, I looked up to see the lovely Bruce Willis gracing the screen. It was a trailer for his new film, Surrogates. It seems to have a really good plot, about a kind of ‘second version of you’ that allows you to do all the things you really want to do! But it all goes wrong when the actual person dies along with the surrogate. It looks like a really good thriller and I will definitely be going to see that! By the end of this, I way still a little red with embarrassment and couldn’t wait for the lights to go down and be swept away in a fantasy world straight from Peter Jackson’s mind.
The film itself is very thought provoking and a really good watch. It caters for all audiences, and I know this because I got bored. I get bored with fighting, guns and all that and so there is some of that for the guys, or girls, who like that kind of thing! But I also cried (again very embarrassing alone), Squirmed (there are some disgusting bits involving finer nails!) and was left craving more, and in a strange trance like state, imagining aliens on the bus ride home! The film is part documentary and it is done very well so the audience knows what it needs to, in order to move the plot along. The trailer showed us aliens coming to earth and a concentration camp style prison, with aliens being interrogated and them saying, ‘We just want to go home”. It was shown as an Independence Day style Alien Invasion movie with a twist, in that we humans have control. The actual film is more a story of a normal man, who gets a promotion. A working man, with a loving wife, who’s’ life is completely turns upside down (or inside-out!) because of the actions of humans, or more specifically the governments in charge! It raises issues and incorporates a lot of what is going on today and indeed our history. I have mentioned the concentration camps, and many parts of the film remind the audience of Nazi Germany. The aliens are seen as lesser creatures and are given the derogatory nickname of Prawns. The MNU are the weapons organisation that are in control of the aliens, though they can’t completely control them, to their dismay. With revolts in Johannesburg, where the ship stopped (which is in Africa, not New Zealand like I thought! So there’s your geography lesson for today!) the MNU look to evict the aliens from their prison of 20 years, into a new, smaller camp away from humans. When the faceless enemy of the film suddenly becomes the underdog your routing for, your whole belief system, and every action ever made by ‘The Humans’ get called into question.

Rating: IF you like Sci-Fi and human interest stories- 8 out of 10

Pointless Fact: Director, Peter Jackson, appears in Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz for a fraction of a second in a Santa Claus suit.

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