Academy Award Nominated Movie Review 7: District 9

In 1982, a spaceship looms over Johannesburg, South Africa and the world has its first contact with aliens. The aliens are discovered to be bug-like creatures that are in huge numbers and sickly and in poor conditions with their ship broken. The humans offer refuge to the aliens but conditions become hostile as the aliens need to steal food to survive and are derogitively nicknamed "Prawns". The aliens are confined into a government camp within Johannesburg named District 9, which soon becomes a slum. 26 years later, a private military company named Multinational United (MNU) is hired by the Johannesburg government to relocate the 1.8 million aliens to a new camp called District 10. Wikus van de Merwe, a young but pompous member of the MNU team leads the extraction team by giving out eviction notices to the aliens. Meanwhile, one of the aliens dubbed "Christopher Johnson", with the help of his son and a friend, searches for technology from the alien ship to distill a liquid into a container that will power the ship to go back home. Wikus accidently finds the container however and while fiddling with it,accidently sprays himself in the face with the liquid. This little mistake has big consequences for Wikus as it changes his view of the MNU, the aliens, and his life forever. I did not have the luck of seeing this movie in the theater due to my lack of knowledge of it, which was a big mistake. This movie was fantastic! The writer and director Neill Blomkamp gives the film a weightened realism of sharing his expieriences growing up in Johannesburg when he was a kid, while mixing in the bizarre and fantastic elements of Science-Fiction to create a wonderfully original story and world. The aliens, while grotesque at first, are expertly created and characterized so that throughout the story, you develop sympathy for them. The characterization of the aliens through very well done special effects and actors in motion capture suits was well done and really added to the stories and character. The main character of Wikus and his story arc were extremely effective and emotionally tugging, in part thanks to Blomkamp's strong writing and the actor Sharlto Copley's wonderful characterization. This is pure fun science-fiction expertly done. I can't wait to see these characters again and I can't wait to see what Blomkamp and Copley cook up together in the future. Overall, 4 stars of 5 for District 9. (Note: I was unable to see Precious, An Education, or A Serious Man in time for this blog. Sorry for the inconvience).