District 9?

I think a problem with the film is that when the lead actor swears and uses the word f**king it sounRAB almost exactly like the Geordie accent. There was quite a bit of laughter in the theatre at points which were supposed to be tense.
 
One of the things I thought of when watching this was that I wished this guy had directed the Transformers films.


Not a perfect film, but loved it all the same...
 
Yes, thanks, I do have some imagination (although given the predictability of your reply one might question if you do). You may have noticed I added "the latter I found particularly annoying because the documentary at the start gave me the impression that some of these questions". The problem wasn't that there were some unanswered questions, but that none of the questions posed at the beginning were answered. In fact some of them became even more opaque. For example, the idea that these were worker bees without their queen, didn't really sit with the idea that there was one prawn who was intelligent yet appeared to have little help from the other prawns, to the extent that he needed the help of a human.

Unanswered questions are all very well, but some need to be answered or else there is no point asking them in the first place. In this case I feel that the lack of answers had more to do with the lack of imagination of the film makers who came up with an interesting premise but didn't know where to go from there and ended up relying on special effects to dig themselves out of a hole.
 
hang on a minute, why on earth should i get out more, as a scouser it just sounded for most of the film a scouser turning into an alien which i found amusing, never did i say i did not enjoy the movie just found it unintentially funny!! Which i suppose could be an added bonus!!!
 
Saw this friday and really enjoyed it. The style switches from documentary to standard movie storytelling half way through but doesn't detract from the overall look.

Excellent performances throughout and it is one of the very few sci-fi movies where you are actually rooting for the aliens.

Don't expect GI Joe or Terminator Salvation glossiness, it's more down and dirty.

NB R5 pirate copy floating around is very good. ;)
 
I think this is the best film I've seen all year. It had the perfect combination of action and suspense, not to mention some pretty top quality effects on a shoestring budget. But it was also very thought provoking and gave a disturbing view of humanities ugliness. Thought Sharlot Copley was amazing, especially as he's not an actor. He effortlessly conveyed a slightly bumbling everyman who's life is torn from him. Altho for most of the film he is not really likable you can still understand the choices he makes even though they look very selfish.

My only gripe would be that there are a few plot holes concerning the aliens and why they've been on earth so long. But it's a minor fly in the ointment.

Just having looked at the previous post, I would think long and hard about watching a pirate copy of a film made with independant money, on a shoestring by young, up and coming directors. It's not like stealing from the big boys...
 
I have just watched this, and thought it was excellent. Not the film I was expecting to see, but it was truly inspiring film-making. Probably the best film I have seen so far this year.
 
I saw this last night. I thought it was good, but not as great as it's been rated in some quarters. Mostly it was interesting. Especially through being South African; it has a style different an American blockbuster.

I found the lead character quite ambivalent. He's out of his depth running this show, but he was quite competent at his normal job. And he's no angel. I found his attitude during the "popcorn" scene chilling. I didn't get the sense that he disapproved.

Edit: I felt it could have done with a bit more plot. I think someone like Joss Whedon would have put more into that side of it.
 
He was due to make a big budget film, Halo, which fell through. That's when Peter Jackson approached him and offered him as much money has he needed to make this one.
 
the first half of the trailer made it look kinda interesting, but then it all went a bit guns and chases and explosions and looked a bit pants.

but you know what trailers can be like.

Iain
 
I suspect the writers didn't think a lot of it through. However, I like the theory that:
the "fuel" wasn't actually fuel at all. After all, the mother ship is moved without it, and it's a tiny amount for an 18-month journey. The drop ship doesn't need it either, because the mother ship can suck it up.

So the theory is that the liquid is a kind of royal jelly, that turns a drone prawn into a pilot. This explains why it turned a human into a kind of prawn - which otherwise doesn't make much sense if it is fuel.

The prawn Christopher is more intelligent than the others, but not necessarily a leader or commander. He might be an advisor to a commander, for example. Or it might be that the prawns get their orders through some mechanism that's located in the ship.
I think there's scope to make a great sequel that goes into all this stuff and twists around much of the initial story. Whether they will do that is another matter. My impression is that they just threw a bunch of ideas together, starting with the apartheid metaphor and ending with a big SFX fight.
 
The slums looked good because they were real slums, the occupants were being moved out as the filming was taking place - as it happens they were being moved to "better social housing" (aka District 10).

Oh, and all the animal parts hanging up in the slums? They were real to, whatever was in the shacks when they opened the doors are what was in them when they were occupied (with the exception of the one fake slum above the ship).

Edit: quite a bit of the IMDB "Trivia" section is actually a good read for this film, it's not normally, and has some interesting facts.

- The film is based on the directors time in Joburg, he grew up during the apartheid
- All the shacks were real, and the residents were being moved out in parallel to the filming
- Animal carcasses were as found in the shacks, with few exceptions, and left in the film
- The "unreal" looking sniper rifle was real, made in SA
- Sharlto (Wikus) adlibed all of his lines
 
I thought that was explained.
It took 20 years to produce enough fuel for the ship so they were stranded. Also the vast majority of the aliens were 'worker bee' types. Only the lead alien, his kid and his friend who was killed seemed to have more about them.
 
Loved it , loved it , loved it :D:D:D

Possibly competing with Cloverfield or Serenity as my favourite Sci fi of this decade. ( Need to see it again to be sure.)
 
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