Last night was the first time in quite a while that I dreaded seeing a movie. I sat in the darkened Lincoln Grand theatre, twirling my pen and nervously tapping my feet, waiting for a sparsely attended late night showing of District 9 to start, hoping against hope that the movie would be terrible.
I needed to rip a movie to shreds. It’s not that I like ripping movies, it’s just that I think writing glowing review after glowing review makes me come off soft. No such luck. District 9 was good, not as good as Inglorious Basterds, but good enough to make me look like a chump with a rubber stamp once again.
District 9 is the latest scion of producer Peter Jackson, whose movie lineage includes Hot Fuzz and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The plot of the movie is introduced documentary style. A race of mysterious creatures, later given the malevolent nickname “Prawns,” appear in a giant spaceship hovering over the city of
A series of interviews begins a sweeping social commentary as seen through the eyes of Wikus Vander Mewe, a sweater-vest wearing apparatchik working for a shadowy organization of private military contractors known as MNU. From there the movie progresses from a documentary account of Wikus pushing around impoverished prawns to a full-scale cinematic style science fiction movie, complete with some pretty nice special effects. Think Blair Witch Project (but not an unwatchable piece of trash) meets Kafka’s Metamorphosis, meets Independence Day, and you’ll have absolutely no idea what this movie is like. Really, you should just go see it, it’s good. I give it three and a half stars.
- Tim Duey
