District 9 Review

Sci Fi fans rejoice: Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 is here, and it’s amazing. In an age where sequels with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars dominate box offices, District 9 dares to try something different. District 9 tells the story of an alien race that crash lands in South Africa, and are immediately quarantined in a holding zone designated District 9 by the human population of South Africa. The movie follows Wikas Van De Merwe, who, through a bizarre accident, begins to transform into one of the aliens. All of a sudden Van De Merwe is hunted by the people he worked for, and is forced to form an allegiance with the aliens he had been working to contain. Very much a metaphor for apartheid, the movie forces us to examine issues of race relations and human (or alien) rights. In fact, many of the interview segments are of real people who suffered under apartheid, and these segments blend brilliantly into the movie.

The cast of District 9 is conspicuously absent of the big names we have come to expect from Hollywood blockbuster’s, a choice that I found to be incredibly refreshing. When a cast consists of mostly unknown talent, we are freed from preconceptions about particular actors, allowing the world created by the film to become that much more real. Sharlto Copley’s performance as the protagonist Wikas Van De Merwe is very solid. He creates a character that is strongly sympathetic, and all of his line delivery is spot-on. Barring Copley, there really aren’t any stand-out performances, but there isn’t a single actor that made me feel let-down by with their performance. The cast of District 9 proves that big names are not at all necessary to create a successful film. In fact, one of the films charms is that all of the characters seem new and fresh as they aren’t portrayed by any big names, who more and more seem to portray the same character film after film.


District 9 also manages to impress on a technical front, with special effects that are impressive, without being too in-your-face or overwhelming. The aliens are all impressively rendered, which is important because they have a large amount of screen-time. The fact that the special effects are so well put together becomes even more impressive when one considers the fact that the entire movie was made on a budget of only 30 million dollars. Compare that to Spiderman 3, which had an enormous budget of 250 million dollars. District 9 proves that a massive budget is not necessary in order to create an enjoyable movie, and I sincerely hope that more movies will begin to cut down their budgets. Because Hollywood budgets have become so inflated, filmmakers take fewer risks, leading to sequel after sequel, and recycled plots that quickly become stale. I sincerely hope that more filmmakers will follow Neil Blomkamp’s example and begin making fresh, interesting films.

One of the most striking segments of the film is the first ten or fifteen minutes of exposition. Presented in a documentary style, the opening minutes of the movie introduce the characters, explain the existence of the alien race, and detail the process of quarantining them in District 9. By presenting this expositional information in such a matter-of-fact way the film instantly draws the audience in. I found myself giving in willingly to the fiction created on screen, something that I haven’t experienced with a major Hollywood release in a long time.

District 9 also defied my expectations in a lot of ways. I went in to the theater expecting a simple sci-fi action flick, full of bizarre alien weaponry, explosions, and flying limbs. While there were plenty of all three of those things, the film also tackled serious issues that are rarely examined in a film of that type. At the beginning of District 9, the audience member is led to sympathize with the humans as the stranded alien race is portrayed as violent, unruly, and unpredictable. However, once Wikas Van De Merwe begins his transformation and is forced to embed himself among the alien population, this perception gradually begins to change as well. We as an audience see that in fact it is the humans who are violent and unpredictable, and that the aliens are merely trying to make a place for themselves in a strange new place. It is interesting to me that a movie about aliens could say so much about the human race’s relation to itself.


All in all I found District 9 to be an incredibly enjoyable film, mainly because it managed to create a world that was so refreshingly genuine that I couldn’t help but be drawn in. This is a movie that Sci-Fi fans cannot miss, and I heartily recommend that everyone give it a chance, if for no other reason than to support a move away from the recycled Hollywood blockbuster of today.

Sleepless in Seattle: Formulaic to a Fault

I should preface this post by saying that chick flicks are not my thing in any way, shape, or form, and that I frequently can't sit all the way through them. Sorry if I sound unfairly harsh towards Sleepless in Seattle.

We've been discussing Bordwell's definition of classical Hollywood cinema and how it relates to the movies we've seen for a while now, and I feel it's safe to say that with every film there has been some (at least slight) differentiation from the formula presented by Bordwell. However, this is not the case with Sleepless in Seattle, a movie that follows Bordwell's criteria to a fault.

In his article, Bordwell presents the idea of a story that follows the "calm, disturbance, resolution, impact" formula. It is no stretch to apply this formula to Sleepless in Seattle. The story begins with an obvious disturbance: the death of Sam Baldwin's (Tom Hanks) wife. Immediately following this, we see the beginnings of a resolution forming as Sam's story is broadcast over the radio and Annie (Meg Ryan) hears the broadcast and begins to fall for Sam. The movie ends with a clear resolution to the problems of the characters, as Sam (presumably) finds love again while Annie finds someone who she is not just settling for. Bordwell also states that in classical Hollywood cinema the plot should be essentially goal-oriented. There is no question that a definite series of goals is presented in Sleepless in Seattle. Annie wants to meet Sam, Sam wants to get over the loss of his wife, and Jonah wants his father to date Annie. All of these goals are clearly presented, and all of these goals are eventually met. This strict adherence to the basic classical Hollywood plot makes the movie incredibly predictable, which, for me, made it entirely uninteresting.

Sleepless in Seattle also conforms to the idea that a classical Hollywood film should present dual plotlines, both of which eventually converge and are resolved together. Nora Ephron presents Sam and Annie's stories simultaneously, while having them converge in a joint resolution at the end of the movie. Unlike the movie's strict adherence to the classical Hollywood plot structure however, this didn't detract from the movie's entertainment value. Rather, it seemed to enhance it, as it allowed the viewer a certain amount of dramatic irony as they were able to make connections between Annie and Sam that neither of those characters was able to.

While it was an interesting experience to watch a movie that could so easily be related to Bordwell's article, I don't think that such strict adherence makes for a particularly good movie. At least not in today's market which is saturated with this kind of movie. By following the formula so exactly, Sleepless in Seattle became predictable to the point where I knew what was going to happen within 10 minutes. For me, much of the excitement of movie-watching comes from not knowing what's going to happen next, and Sleepless in Seattle completely took that away. I think that there are certain things to be said for the classical formula laid out by Bordwell, but that following it exactly makes for a bland and uninteresting film, as Sleepless in Seattle showed.