5 out of 5

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Yknow, interestingly, there was another movie recently featuring a CGI alien race that is being mistreated by humans, with a protagonist reluctantly joining forces for the greater good. While Avatar made tons of bucks and was pretty entertaining, District 9 is FAR superior, with much better acting, a more impressive use of budget, and an incredibly more thoughtful plot. Aliens land on Earth in 1982, their ship stopping over Johannesburg, South Africa. Then… they nothing happens. They appear to be mostly unintelligent, filthy, disgusting creatures, somewhat resembling shrimp, and are thus tagged with the slur prawns, eventually hustled into an isolated dwelling called District 9. As tensions between humans and aliens escalate over the next 20 years, plans are set to further isolate the aliens, a plan overseen by government agency MNU. But MNU has a secret hope to take advantage of the advanced alien weaponry, and when MNU employee Wikus becomes involved with the aliens through a twist of fate, things change rapidly and discoveries are made both about the aliens and the agency. Long explanation. District 9 is shot documentary style but is done smartly, with tactfully applied shaky-cam and well-timed interviews cut in, as well as mostly improv-ed dialogue that comes across brilliantly realistically and raw that the CGI interactions breathe amazing life. District 9 combines humor, smarts, story, and action in a really breathtaking way. It has enough subtext to not be trite but knows not to layer anything too obnoxiously. This is phenomenal film-making.