District 9

[Brodirt]

I saw it this afternoon....my wife and I happened to both get home a bit early and the cleaning lady, who comes on Friday and loves my kids and hasnt gotten to spend time with the older one since she was at sleep away camp, was very willing to spend an extra hour GRATIS!

So, off we went to District 9.

I won't spoil it for those who want to see it. I will say it is excellent sci-fi, both high minded and action packed...a very good combination.

I am undecided as to how much I liked it though...I am going to actually have to think about it. I loved it while I was watching it but because there is so much depth to it I couldnt admit to loving it when it was over because it is challenging and will actually require rumination.

For those that intend to see it and who have read Gravity's Rainbow, please keep Pynchon in mind when you see it and tell me when your done if some of the story isn't taken from GR.

 

[Kratos]

Cool! I'm going to see it as soon as my work week is over. From the previews it looks exactly like the sort of underhanded thing humans would try to pull on some aliens.

 

[Phog Allen]

Hey Brodirt. The wife and I are going to see this movie very soon. Glad to see a positive review. I get more persnickety with movie reviews the older I get. Movies I thought were okay as a twenty something now seem ridiculous at times and I don't just mean the John Hughes fare either. When The Thing was remade in 1982 I though it was okay. However, knowing how much I loved the original I have developed a very blah attitude about the newer version. I loved the original Predator and can certainly watch Alien vs Preadator. Yet the movie could have been so MUCH more. I mean, you had Lance Henrickson for crying out loud. Yet he was portrayed as a weak, sick old man while a 115lb girl kicks arse and saves the day with a 7' tall predator? There was really no true sense of danger for her character. I mean, they weren't going to show a young gril ripped up by the Predator or the Alien. We had plenty of effeminate male characters for that. I was obvious she was going to be the "badass" of the movie from the first scene when she was scaling the ice cliff, alone. This sort of stuff just doesn't work for me. Maybe I am chauvinistic about it but I get tired of seeing movies where 115lb models lift three hundred pound guys off their feet with a flick of their tiny feet in designer boots. Sorry for the rant. I should just stick to the movie at hand.

Regards, Todd

 

[Kratos]

I loved the original Predator and can certainly watch Alien vs Preadator. Yet the movie could have been so MUCH more. I mean, you had Lance Henrickson for crying out loud. Yet he was portrayed as a weak, sick old man while a 115lb girl kicks arse and saves the day with a 7' tall predator? There was really no true sense of danger for her character. I mean, they weren't going to show a young gril ripped up by the Predator or the Alien. We had plenty of effeminate male characters for that. I was obvious she was going to be the "badass" of the movie from the first scene when she was scaling the ice cliff, alone. This sort of stuff just doesn't work for me. Maybe I am chauvinistic about it but I get tired of seeing movies where 115lb models lift three hundred pound guys off their feet with a flick of their tiny feet in designer boots. Sorry for the rant. I should just stick to the movie at hand.

Regards, Todd

What?! Don't you know 115lb hotties are the backbone of every confrontation? There's nothing chauvinistic about it. It always pegs my BS meter when I see Angelina Jolie, or some other spindly heroine right-crossing some guy and knocking him back like 6 ft. Or flooring him. AvP could have been soooo much better. The second one was even worse. I have high hopes for District 9. I wish Jackson had been the one to make Transformers.

 

[Kenno]

saw it today, a good film with good effects. pissed myself laughing a couple of times, but no one else was? see if others can see the humour in some scenes?

can't wait till they come back for the south african prawn!

 

[SRock]

Thanks for starting this review thread. District 9 is on my list of movies to see. It will be here in a few more weeks. I'll check back then.

 

[Brodirt]

saw it today, a good film with good effects. pissed myself laughing a couple of times, but no one else was? see if others can see the humour in some scenes?

can't wait till they come back for the south african prawn!

I bet you were laughing at one of the Nigerian scenes, right? Myself and a few others were laughing at that scene as well.

 

[Kenno]

I bet you were laughing at one of the Nigerian scenes, right? Myself and a few others were laughing at that scene as well.

yep, and the bit where they said he had sex with the prawn, i couldn't stop laughing, plus Wikus was a great character.

 

[Phog Allen]

Hey lads. The wife and I are taking the day off tomorrow and decided to purchase tickets for this movie at the recently renovated AMC Mainstreet Six in Kansas City Missouri. We will attend the matinee showing tomorrow at midday. Kansas City is home to AMC theatres and this old jewel was recently gone over from stem to stern. It is an elegant place as is but we have not gone inside. Only marveled whilst driving by. The exterior photos do no justice to the effort. Click on the history to see what it looked like after years of neglect. It was a glorious girl in its day. The nice thing about this latest effort is that all seats are reserved. They have both traditional and cinema suites. The suites have reclining chairs and servers will bring you drinks and meals as you wish. The cost for the suites(which were not available in the early matinee)are $20 per ticket but that includes ten dollars in food and drink vouchers. Pretty classy stuff. We opted for the more mundane traditional seating without seat side service but it will be fine.

Mayhaps I can talk the wife into an early lunch at Pierpont's in Union Station in addition to the cinema outing. I will relate the experience tomorrow evening.

Regards, Todd

 

[ClubmanRob]

I saw it this afternoon... and I absolutely hated it. I hated the lead actor, the premise, the ending (that a retarded monkey could have seen coming), and pretty much everything about the movie. The special effects were good, though.

I wasted my Sunday and I'm not happy about it.

 

[tam.audio]

saw it today, a good film with good effects. pissed myself laughing a couple of times, but no one else was? see if others can see the humour in some scenes?

can't wait till they come back for the south african prawn!

Can you say flying pig?

 

[Brodirt]

I saw it this afternoon... and I absolutely hated it. I hated the lead actor, the premise, the ending (that a retarded monkey could have seen coming), and pretty much everything about the movie. The special effects were good, though.

I wasted my Sunday and I'm not happy about it.

Wow, Sorry Rob...your supposed to hate the lead actor, its part of what is challenging about the movie. I too was tossed up about the ending and it is part of what I have been thinking about...but I give major credit to the fact that the movie challenged me so much more than most others. No pat Hollywood premises to fall back...familiar plot devices yes, but not the type found in a summer movie for sure...more usually reserved for quality literature. What about the premise did you hate? I think there are so many layers to the premise, and the story, that its hard to pick one "premise" that the movie was about. If you are referring to the motivation for the lead to be forced into what he was...its Gravity's Rainbow as I was mentioning...have you read it?

 

[ClubmanRob]

Wow, Sorry Rob...your supposed to hate the lead actor, its part of what is challenging about the movie.

Well, let me clarify... I hated the lead actor and his character.

That was one problem with the film- there was really no sympathetic character. If you don't care about any of the characters in a film... you don't really care what happens to them. I know I didn't.

I too was tossed up about the ending and it is part of what I have been thinking about...but I give major credit to the fact that the movie challenged me so much more than most others. No pat Hollywood premises to fall back...familiar plot devices yes, but not the type found in a summer movie for sure...more usually reserved for quality literature. What about the premise did you hate? I think there are so many layers to the premise, and the story, that its hard to pick one "premise" that the movie was about. If you are referring to the motivation for the lead to be forced into what he was...its Gravity's Rainbow as I was mentioning...have you read it?

It was the thinly veiled social commentary that has been a trapping for any sci-fi film with a "message" since the fifties. I think we've moved past the point where we have to disguise systematic human racism under a context of human/alien interaction. I just think the idea has been done to death. If this film had been made in the sixties or seventies it would have already been clichéd.

Then we move past the subtext into the obvious plot conventions... "who are the real monsters- the humans or the aliens (zzzzzz....)" and "one man vs. the Orwellian government agency bent on building weapons of mass destruction (snore)" or "let's make a really overdone and five years too late commentary on the Iraq war by drawing a parallel to government relocation under the guise of finding weapons of terror" and blah blah blah. It's not a very "deep" movie in any way. The only time I really stopped to think was when I was trying to figure out how much longer until the film was over.

I know I'm batting two and 0 now, but I read Gravity's Rainbow back and junior high. I've always considered Thomas Pynchon a hack, and Gravity's Rainbow is a great example of what happens when a hack masquerades as an intellectual. Deliberately obscure and unnecessarily complex, it's not a book I intend on ever reading again. I really didn't draw any references between the book and this film, of course, it has been awhile since I read it, so that may be my fault.

 

[Wendy]

saw it today, a good film with good effects. pissed myself laughing a couple of times, but no one else was? see if others can see the humour in some scenes?

It must be worth watching if a grown man pissed himself laughing and is not ashamed to say it. I will put it on my list along with every other movie that has come out in the last 12 years.

 

[Brodirt]

Well, let me clarify... I hated the lead actor and his character.

That was one problem with the film- there was really no sympathetic character. If you don't care about any of the characters in a film... you don't really care what happens to them. I know I didn't.

Agreed...no one likeable. Maybe if they cast Will Smith the movie would have been better. Sorry for that sarcasm, but I see the lack of a likeable character as so against the crap that is fed to us every day that it, in and of itself, makes the movie better than anything else out there.

It was the thinly veiled social commentary that has been a trapping for any sci-fi film with a "message" since the fifties. I think we've moved past the point where we have to disguise systematic human racism under a context of human/alien interaction. I just think the idea has been done to death. If this film had been made in the sixties or seventies it would have already been clichéd.

Then we move past the subtext into the obvious plot conventions... "who are the real monsters- the humans or the aliens (zzzzzz....)" and "one man vs. the Orwellian government agency bent on building weapons of mass destruction (snore)" or "let's make a really overdone and five years too late commentary on the Iraq war by drawing a parallel to government relocation under the guise of finding weapons of terror" and blah blah blah. It's not a very "deep" movie in any way. The only time I really stopped to think was when I was trying to figure out how much longer until the film was over.

I know I'm batting two and 0 now, but I read Gravity's Rainbow back and junior high. I've always considered Thomas Pynchon a hack, and Gravity's Rainbow is a great example of what happens when a hack masquerades as an intellectual. Deliberately obscure and unnecessarily complex, it's not a book I intend on ever reading again. I really didn't draw any references between the book and this film, of course, it has been awhile since I read it, so that may be my fault.

Funny...I saw all of the politics, and admired the fact that the film makers steered completely away from any heavy commentary on them. Rather than challenging one side or the other for being at fault about anything, they simply present a situation and events that occur within that situation. They leave the politics out and simply move on with the, yes, somewhat more predictable, final reel. There is no one side at fault here...we are all at fault. Again, a very clever way of forcing you to confront your own morality without slapping an Us or Them emblem on it to make it too easy for you.

With your anger on Ali in the boxing thread, and this critique, I think you're looking at things a bit too politically. I know because I'm often guilty of doing the same.

 

[ClubmanRob]

Agreed...no one likeable. Maybe if they cast Will Smith the movie would have been better. Sorry for that sarcasm, but I see the lack of a likeable character as so against the crap that is fed to us every day that it, in and of itself, makes the movie better than anything else out there.

Whoah... I think you're painting me as a cookie cutter type. I hate Will Smith and everything his ilk stands for. I'm not saying I need a Schwartzenegger hoo-rah type to root for, but like I said, if I don't care about any of the characters, I'm not going to care about what happens to them. If I don't care about what develops, why am I watching the movie?

A case in point- look at Pulp Fiction. There's not really a character in the film that you can "root" for, but at least they were interesting enough to want to know more about them.

And I don't think that since a film doesn't fit in to a traditional summer movie formula it automatically makes it good... it has to be good in order to be good. Being a corporate rebel doesn't give you credibility.

Funny...I saw all of the politics, and admired the fact that the film makers steered completely away from any heavy commentary on them. Rather than challenging one side or the other for being at fault about anything, they simply present a situation and events that occur within that situation. They leave the politics out and simply move on with the, yes, somewhat more predictable, final reel. There is no one side at fault here...we are all at fault. Again, a very clever way of forcing you to confront your own morality without slapping an Us or Them emblem on it to make it too easy for you.

With your anger on Ali in the boxing thread, and this critique, I think you're looking at things a bit too politically. I know because I'm often guilty of doing the same.

I didn't really care about where the politics fell in the movie. I just think (again) we're past the point where we need to paint a social commentary as a futuristic sci-fi film. And I think the film really suffered to me because it wasn't tongue in cheek (did you see the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still?) It took itself way too seriously, like the director said "I really want to say something with this movie, but I don't know how to do it" so it just fell into pretentious time honored conventions.

Case in point- Starship Troopers. A movie that was so bad it was good. Though the message behind the film and the literary source were polar opposites of each other, it never took itself seriously and pretty much told the audience that it was laughing with them, and not at them. District 9 was a very pandering effort that insulted my intelligence in the way that it tried to present itself as something thought provoking. Again, it was the very definition of "pretentious".

I don't feel I look at things too politically. I do over-analyze things to the point of redundancy, and I often think that people say things to try and sound "right on" without really understanding what they're saying, and I try to bring them a little bit closer to what I think reality is, or at least, try and get them to explore the meanings of the words that they just wrote or said. I do the same thing, so I appreciate it when someone shares their reaction to something I penned... it may be a completely alternate way of looking at an issue that I never explored before. I would say that I'm a closet philosopher, but that would just make me pretentious.

 

[SRock]

So the myriad of opinions here make me want to see it even more.

 

[Kenno]

A case in point- look at Pulp Fiction. There's not really a character in the film that you can "root" for, but at least they were interesting enough to want to know more about them.

don't tell me you were rooting for the gimp and not bruce willis? lmao. i was cheering for willis all the way through the film.

district 9 was an ok film for me, 6.5 outta 10, but there was enough laughs in it for me to recommend it to my mates. some very funny bits and the lead character was funny as. the prawns the prawns. the Nigerians even had a Hustler mag with Wikus playing a staring role, lmao.

 

[Brodirt]

Whoah... I think you're painting me as a cookie cutter type. I hate Will Smith and everything his ilk stands for. I'm not saying I need a Schwartzenegger hoo-rah type to root for, but like I said, if I don't care about any of the characters, I'm not going to care about what happens to them. If I don't care about what develops, why am I watching the movie?

A case in point- look at Pulp Fiction. There's not really a character in the film that you can "root" for, but at least they were interesting enough to want to know more about them.

And I don't think that since a film doesn't fit in to a traditional summer movie formula it automatically makes it good... it has to be good in order to be good. Being a corporate rebel doesn't give you credibility.






I didn't really care about where the politics fell in the movie. I just think (again) we're past the point where we need to paint a social commentary as a futuristic sci-fi film. And I think the film really suffered to me because it wasn't tongue in cheek (did you see the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still?) It took itself way too seriously, like the director said "I really want to say something with this movie, but I don't know how to do it" so it just fell into pretentious time honored conventions.

Case in point- Starship Troopers. A movie that was so bad it was good. Though the message behind the film and the literary source were polar opposites of each other, it never took itself seriously and pretty much told the audience that it was laughing with them, and not at them. District 9 was a very pandering effort that insulted my intelligence in the way that it tried to present itself as something thought provoking. Again, it was the very definition of "pretentious".

I don't feel I look at things too politically. I do over-analyze things to the point of redundancy, and I often think that people say things to try and sound "right on" without really understanding what they're saying, and I try to bring them a little bit closer to what I think reality is, or at least, try and get them to explore the meanings of the words that they just wrote or said. I do the same thing, so I appreciate it when someone shares their reaction to something I penned... it may be a completely alternate way of looking at an issue that I never explored before. I would say that I'm a closet philosopher, but that would just make me pretentious.

Rob...my point wasn't where they fell in the movie, it was that you saw the movie painted on a political canvas whereas I felt the politics were completely irrelevant. It, the politics, was a part of the film for the purpose of illustrating why Wikus was not likeable and when he realizes that maybe everything he has believed for the last 20 years is wrong but that it was still next to impossible for him to offer any change in morality...a bit,yes, but it was still primarily self-centered.

In a typical, non-challenging movie, you would have walked away liking Wikus with him having done some huge act to cleanse the entire society of its sins.

When it comes on TV watch it again....I am telling you its strongest point is that it took all the stereotypes and twisted them askew.

 

[Austin]

I saw it this afternoon... and I absolutely hated it. I hated the lead actor, the premise, the ending (that a retarded monkey could have seen coming), and pretty much everything about the movie. The special effects were good, though.

I wasted my Sunday and I'm not happy about it.

At least you got to see some action. I got stuck watching The Time Traveler's Wife.