Review - District 9

District 9 is the very first feature film by director Neill Blomkamp. Before this, Blomkamp was best known for his short film Alive in Joburg and some marketing short films he made for the release of Halo 3. The Halo footage was so impressive that some publishers decided to sign him on as the director of the Halo movie, with Peter Jackson producing. Everyone moved to New Zealand and production on Halo began. A few months in, the project was cut. From the ashes of Halo, District 9 was born. End of the history lesson.

For those of you that know me, you know I really really like good sci-fi movies. As of late I've been favoring flicks like Moon and Sunshine. However, it feels like we haven't had a good alien related sci-fi in a while (maybe since Alien/Aliens?). Well, the time has come... District 9 is amazing.

The cast is packed with unknowns, including the lead. And let me tell you, the acting is fantastic. Never once do I think, "oh, these are just actors pretending to be part of a fake documentary." The lead, Sharlto Copley, has never acted in a film before, and to my enormous surprise he carries the movie from beginning to end.

The setting and story are both some of the most original ideas I've ever seen in a movie, and especially the way in which it is conveyed. It's basically a documentary after-the-fact with some shakycam filming to cover the rest that obviously isn't documentary style. The movie is set in South Africa... when have you ever seen a movie like this set in some place other than The United States? The sheer variety in the movie is refreshing as well. It doesn't turn to action until close to the end but the pace still keeps you grabbed through the whole film. And man, the action is also really dang good. Very very badass. Definitely better than that Transformers 2 garbage and better than most of the ridiculous action in Terminator Salvation as well. Did I mention that this movie only had a 30 million dollar budget? Compare that to Star Trek at like 150mil and Transformers 2 at 200mil... it's crazy that this movie was able to do so much so well with so little.

Let me caution though... some people definitely won't like the movie. I was grabbed by the movie the entire way through so some of the things that may bother some people I completely didn't even notice. But I told my parents it was good and they went to go see it and definitely didn't enjoy it. I completely forgot how much cursing/violence there was, I just thought "great movie." Woops! Usually I'm better about knowing those things when I talk to them about movies :)

So yep, I got my sci-fi fix this week. This is officially my 2nd favorite movie of the year. District 9 will be added to my list of movies from this summer that I'm going to purchase. If you're curious, others include: Star Trek, Up, and 500 Days of Summer. Did I mention I saw 500 Days of Summer today also? Yeah, I'll review that next, whenever "next" decides to be...

Potential Based on Preview: 7/10
Actual Movie: 9.5/10