The last movie you saw

[Chupacabra]

Gran Torino

It's what Eastwood does best;
He sketches a scenario where someone, reluctant to do the right thing, *does* the right thing.
There's laughs to be had, and tears to be jerked.

Enjoyed it: 9/10

[andyman]

has anyone seen district 9 yet? i want to see it

[Scourge]

No, but I'm interested.

[shaft]

is it out?

[Scourge]

Today I think.

[GONNAFISTYA]

It was released at midnight today (this morning) and has had glowing reviews (which isn't saying much nowadays).

Some trivia on District 9:

- it was directed by the guy who was going to make the Halo movie (anyone remember the cool test footage from that?)
- The Halo movie was canceled, so Peter Jackson gave the director $30 million and said,"Make whatever movie you want" and District 9 is the result.

[Scourge]

I guess there's a good bit of difference between 'here make this halo movie' and 'here make the movie you want'. As a level designer, I think you probably understand that. Not saying that you said it sucked or anything, just sayin'....

[GONNAFISTYA]

Yer....I hear you. I think this movie could be cool.

District 9 is actually a remake of Alive in Joburg which seems like an interesting story. No doubt more interesting than "Alien Nation".

[sliver]

District 9: 8/10

Aliens have been on Earth for 28 years. Not invaders, not even supplicants, they simply appeared here, stranded, and became terrestrial refugees. Mysteriously lacking leadership like isolated drone workers in an ant colony, they submitted to containment in a ghetto outside Johannesburg, South Africa, in the shadow of the mothership which has floated in lifeless silence for nearly three decades.

District 9, South African director Neill Blomkamp’s first major feature, picks up as that ghetto is about to be cleared. District 9 is too close to Johannesburg for human comfort now that the aliens, popularly maligned as “prawns,” have turned to crime and scavenging. So a new, Auschwitz-like camp is set up and christened District 10, and Multi-National United, a private contractor responsible for the aliens – but pointedly uninterested in their welfare – begins serving eviction notices.

The fundamentals are quickly established in the film’s opening, which assumes a documentary-style cinema verité aesthetic, complete with faux interviews. (Much is being made of the pseudo-documentary approach, but Blomkamp is really just picking up where Cloverfield and Rachel’s Getting Married left off.) The parallels to more mundane and familiar episodes of human xenophobia – especially in the setting of apartheid-scorched South Africa – are obvious.

But the film really kicks into gear when MNU agent Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), heading the alien relocation effort, becomes infected with a virus-like alien compound while in District 9 and finds his body converting to prawn physiology.

The aliens’ powerful weaponry has been inert since their arrival on Earth, unusable to humans because its operation requires alien DNA. But Wikus’s accidental discovery provides him with just that, instantly rendering him the most valuable person on the planet. What follows is a chase movie of sorts, Rambo-fied with enough alien firepower to shock and awe the continent.

Like every other aspect of the film – shooting style, portrayal of aliens, setting, budget – the protagonist is notably unorthodox. Not particularly likeable, and bearing a frequently disconcerting resemblance to Steve Carrell (who would fit in this movie roughly as well as the Village People would seem at home in Full Metal Jacket), Copley makes for an interesting leading man.

Yet as emotionally distancing as this might seem, Copley’s flawed banality keeps the action rooted here on Earth rather than in the fantastical stratospheres of Star Wars or Independence Day, and gives his character more of an arc to complete as he is forced to hide from MNU in the one place that affords a bit of safety and anonymity: District 9.

As engrossing, offbeat, and multi-faceted as a hybrid of Schindler’s List, Starship Troopers, The Fugitive, and Lars von Trier’s emphatically unmediated The Celebration, the Peter Jackson-produced District 9 offers a tortuous – but never torturous – cinematic experience completely unlike anything else this year.

Praise of Blomkamp’s limitless originality is somewhat hyperbolic: the film’s individual elements are well-worn, they are merely combined, Tarantino-style, in a new and unexpected way. The plot is Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” on alien steroids. The unsurprising denouement is almost predictably open-ended in light of Children of Men. Even the humanization of the aliens is simply a new variation on the filmic affirmative action of African directors such as Ousmane Sembene, who attempted to re-colonize the silver screen after European colonial pictures reduced the black man’s cinematic status to that of Other – the uncivilized brute. (It might be noted here that District 9's narrative agency is nonetheless dispensed almost entirely to white men.)

But we are living in postmodern times and thorough originality is nigh on nonexistent. It is enough that District 9 offers such a refreshing change of pace, something so manifestly outside of the mainstream, even as it flirts with Hollywood convention.

More than that, it is a reminder that despite the torrent of remakes, reboots, and reinventions in Hollywood, there are genuinely creative filmmakers out there plying their craft. For every Meet the Spartans that hits the cineplex, there is a Pan’s Labyrinth or a Brick out there somewhere.

It can certainly be said that Blomkamp and his virtuosic filmmaking have put South Africa on the map, even by the standards of a nearly hermetic North American audience.

[Hannibal]

hermeneutic

My guess (and hope) is that you meant to type something other than 'hermeneutic' in that last sentence.

[sliver]

Shit, "hermetic," I mix those two up a lot. Can't ever remember wtf hermeneutic means, either; it's something about philosophy or phenomenology.

Good catch.

[Hannibal]

For your personal edification:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/

[7zark7]

I.D. 6/10


4 British Cops infiltrate a football firm, one gets right into it...becomes top boy. Wasnt a real firm from what I could tell.. called themselves the Dogs. but I think they were trying to be Millwall. It was pretty good... seemed more like a made for TV film..and the main character really seemed to be doing his best Robbie Carlyle nutter impression.

[Ryoki]

Sliver that's one of the best reviews you ever wrote. It's slightly less pretentious than your usual, and it even managed to hold my attention to about three quarters of the way, at which point i could not stand the wholly unnecessary use of complicated words any longer. That's a good thing though, i usually feel that way after reading the first two paragraphs of your reviews.

Say, do you ever read the reviews of Eileen Jones? She's a lot better than you are, i think you could learn from her.

[Chupacabra]

Sliver that's one of the best reviews you ever wrote. It's slightly less pretentious than your usual, and it even managed to hold my attention to about three quarters of the way, at which point i could not stand the wholly unnecessary use of complicated words any longer. That's a good thing though, i usually feel that way after reading the first two paragraphs of your reviews.

Say, do you ever read the reviews of Eileen Jones? She's a lot better than you are, i think you could learn from her.

[Geebs]

District 9: 8/10

More than that, it is a reminder that despite the torrent of remakes, reboots, and reinventions in Hollywood, there are genuinely creative filmmakers out there plying their craft. For every Meet the Spartans that hits the cineplex, there is a Pan’s Labyrinth or a Brick out there somewhere.

It can certainly be said that Blomkamp and his virtuosic filmmaking have put South Africa on the map, even by the standards of a nearly hermetic North American audience.

You realize that a reference to Brick as original (or even watchable) is a big, glaring beacon pointing you out as a total penis who should never, ever offer an opinion as to the quality of a movie, don't you?

Come to think of it, you post like someone with a mouthful of marbles trying to cough up a thesaurus....

[Chupacabra]

Nanking

good documentary about the Japanese's brutal occupation of Nan Jing. Minus points for the Chinese communist government shoving the movie down people's throats trying to make them hate Japan instead of the retarded Chinese government.

i just watched Nanking yesterday. Is this the one you saw? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893356/

[feedback]

I think so

[sliver]

You realize that a reference to Brick as original (or even watchable) is a big, glaring beacon pointing you out as a total penis who should never, ever offer an opinion as to the quality of a movie, don't you?

Come to think of it, you post like someone with a mouthful of marbles trying to cough up a thesaurus....

You've been the biggest twat on this forum for going on a decade now, and if you didn't like Brick it's probably because you're too full of yourself. You're the kind of person who shits on Tarantino (no I'm not a fanboy) to the extent where you won't even say a good word about Pulp Fiction, which more than deserves it.

If I used a thesaurus I could scarcely have mixed up hermetic and hermeneutic, since they have nothing to do with one another aside from sharing syllables.

Get fucked.

[menkent]

i liked brick, but he's right. that was high school newspaper material.
"tortuous – but never torturous"

[seremtan]

Drama at Movie Thread High - 9/10 - a would-be movie reviewer gives his opinion on a recently-released film only to have his effort laughed into the ground, resulting in much butthurt

would watch again

[Geebs]

You realize that a reference to Brick as original (or even watchable) is a big, glaring beacon pointing you out as a total penis who should never, ever offer an opinion as to the quality of a movie, don't you?

Come to think of it, you post like someone with a mouthful of marbles trying to cough up a thesaurus....

You've been the biggest twat on this forum for going on a decade now, and if you didn't like Brick it's probably because you're too full of yourself. You're the kind of person who shits on Tarantino (no I'm not a fanboy) to the extent where you won't even say a good word about Pulp Fiction, which more than deserves it.

If I used a thesaurus I could scarcely have mixed up hermetic and hermeneutic, since they have nothing to do with one another aside from sharing syllables.

Get fucked.

Surely you mean a dictionary?

Good job on the ten years thing though, it serves as a reminder that you really should of grown out of this sort of thing by now

[Tsakali]

District 9 8.5/10

It had a unique feel to it, and since I knew nothing as to what book or previous work it was based on , the entire premise of it felt fresh and thought provoking, yet in an eerily dry and sometimes morbid fashion.

[shaft]

District 9

Definitely a cool story, bros.

[sliver]

You've been the biggest twat on this forum for going on a decade now, and if you didn't like Brick it's probably because you're too full of yourself. You're the kind of person who shits on Tarantino (no I'm not a fanboy) to the extent where you won't even say a good word about Pulp Fiction, which more than deserves it.

If I used a thesaurus I could scarcely have mixed up hermetic and hermeneutic, since they have nothing to do with one another aside from sharing syllables.

Get fucked.

Surely you mean a dictionary?

Good job on the ten years thing though, it serves as a reminder that you really should of grown out of this sort of thing by now

I meant a thesaurus; you accused me of using one, so if I'd looked up "isolated" and found "hermetic" how could I have ended up with "hermeneutic?" Jeez.

And you say I'm supposed to have outgrown Q3W? I've racked up 850 posts since 2005, something tells me you spend a lot more time here than I do. I'm 23 and I know you're a lot older than that -- I haven't "outgrown" video games yet.