District 9

Title: District 9
Year: 2009
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writers: Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell
Starring: Sharlto Copley
Music: Clinton Shorter
Length: 112 minutes
Synopsis: a million aliens stranded on Earth are kept in a South African slum
How I saw it: in the theater (advance screening), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 8/10
Objective Rating: 5/10 (points off for story, characters, cinematography, special effects/design and music)

Very original movie. Lots of fun. It's a bit schizophrenic - it starts off as a weird mix of serious science fiction and satire, then turns into an action movie - but I kind of like genre confusion in a movie. There are some plot holes. The character development doesn't make a lot of sense (the main human character does a moral 180 in the space of about five minutes). They go out of their way to establish just how alien these aliens' behavior is, but then the two alien characters we get to know are not at all alien, but instead have (Western) human cultural mores (and are the only such characters in the movie) and behave like Hollywood protagonists. The special effects are better than you might expect for this kind of movie, but I'm prejudiced against CGI (at least, when it looks like CGI). Anyway, I meant this to be a positive review*. You've never seen a movie like this before. It's entertaining throughout, and whether or not you think it's good, it will probably get you thinking and talking about it afterward.

*if you can call my little blurbs "reviews."