Cinematically this Summer has been pretty sparse in terms of big blockbuster film releases. Last year I had the pleasure of Iron man, Dark Knight, WALL-E, Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army; all of which I enjoyed immensely (despite Indiana Jones actually being quite a bad film). Star trek aside I would say that this year has been a big let down for any cinema goers looking for some decent spectacle.
What successful big releases have we actually had this summer? I adored Watchmen but that didn't really have a Summer release. This summer I have had the displeasure of sitting through Transformers 2: Revenge of the Faggots, X-men Origins: Wolverbean and Terminator Salivation. There was of course Fast and Furious which i had the pleasure of not sitting through as it was obviously just going to be awful. So I had been very dissapointed by the poor quality and seemingly uncared for and rushed feel of the majority of this Summer's releases. That was until...DISTRICT 9!
Having been eagerly anticipating the release of this film ever since I heard of it's production maybe 6 months or so ago it had alot of expectations to live up to and on the whole it did just that. The plot centres around a fictionalised past where an alien mothership lands over the city of Johannesburg and in an effort to understand these alien's technology we human's end up exploiting and misstreating the alien's themselves-housing them in a filthy slum and conducting inhumane experiments on them. The clear connotations and links to the apartide imbue this sci-fi action flick with a realism that most modern films within the genre would struggle to attain. The adoption of the documentary style for large segments of the film are also obvious contributor's to constructting this tone of realism. My main issue with the film is that the realism is almost completely abolished when out of nowhere the premise of the film being a documentary is completely dropped for a good 40-50 minutes until it returns again at the end. Although I can sympathise with the difficulties it would have caused conveyeing the plot of the film by upholding the documentary framework I can't help but think that if you can't do something consistently why do it at all? Having said this the documentary premise affords an emotional connection to the protagonist that is rarely seen in a modern sci-fi flick.
On the subject of the protagonist it is worth mentioning how phenomonal the performance Sharlto Copley gives in this role. With a South African accent as thick as an Oak I felt a huge degree of sympathy for this character. I liked the fact that he wasn't a particularly nice man as well, seen to be openly xenophobic and 'racist' to the Aliens and pretty much only really acting on his own behalf throughout the film it provided a much more realistic and human depicition of an everyday man thrown into an extraordinary situation.
With an exceptionally modest budget of $30 million the special effects are a triumph from beginning to end. This is a testament to the fact that people should stop giving money to Michael Bay and invest it in people who don't just throw money at problems but spend it wisely and produce something just as visually impressive. I have alot of respect for District 9. It is exciting, touching, scary and dare I say it thought provoking. I hugely admire Neill BlomKamp's boldness to do something so daring and new with his debut feature length film,this could so easily have been another fairly mindless action/sci-fi movie but it fortunately was much more than that. If you haven't seen it yet, do so. Here is a short film Neill Blomkamp made before District 9, it gives you a good idea on the scope of his ideas for such an inexperienced film maker:
Often when I look back upon some of my favourite 'genre' movies my admiration for them stems from how well they perform within their genre and at the same time operate so boldly outside of it conceptually (a-la District 9). Here are some of my favourite aforementioned 'genre' movies that do something a bit more subversive and interesting:
The Thing
Escape From New York
Don't Look Now
Unbreakable
Sexy Beast
Having been eagerly anticipating the release of this film ever since I heard of it's production maybe 6 months or so ago it had alot of expectations to live up to and on the whole it did just that. The plot centres around a fictionalised past where an alien mothership lands over the city of Johannesburg and in an effort to understand these alien's technology we human's end up exploiting and misstreating the alien's themselves-housing them in a filthy slum and conducting inhumane experiments on them. The clear connotations and links to the apartide imbue this sci-fi action flick with a realism that most modern films within the genre would struggle to attain. The adoption of the documentary style for large segments of the film are also obvious contributor's to constructting this tone of realism. My main issue with the film is that the realism is almost completely abolished when out of nowhere the premise of the film being a documentary is completely dropped for a good 40-50 minutes until it returns again at the end. Although I can sympathise with the difficulties it would have caused conveyeing the plot of the film by upholding the documentary framework I can't help but think that if you can't do something consistently why do it at all? Having said this the documentary premise affords an emotional connection to the protagonist that is rarely seen in a modern sci-fi flick.
On the subject of the protagonist it is worth mentioning how phenomonal the performance Sharlto Copley gives in this role. With a South African accent as thick as an Oak I felt a huge degree of sympathy for this character. I liked the fact that he wasn't a particularly nice man as well, seen to be openly xenophobic and 'racist' to the Aliens and pretty much only really acting on his own behalf throughout the film it provided a much more realistic and human depicition of an everyday man thrown into an extraordinary situation.
With an exceptionally modest budget of $30 million the special effects are a triumph from beginning to end. This is a testament to the fact that people should stop giving money to Michael Bay and invest it in people who don't just throw money at problems but spend it wisely and produce something just as visually impressive. I have alot of respect for District 9. It is exciting, touching, scary and dare I say it thought provoking. I hugely admire Neill BlomKamp's boldness to do something so daring and new with his debut feature length film,this could so easily have been another fairly mindless action/sci-fi movie but it fortunately was much more than that. If you haven't seen it yet, do so. Here is a short film Neill Blomkamp made before District 9, it gives you a good idea on the scope of his ideas for such an inexperienced film maker:
Often when I look back upon some of my favourite 'genre' movies my admiration for them stems from how well they perform within their genre and at the same time operate so boldly outside of it conceptually (a-la District 9). Here are some of my favourite aforementioned 'genre' movies that do something a bit more subversive and interesting:
The Thing
Escape From New York
Don't Look Now
Unbreakable
Sexy Beast
No comments:
Post a Comment