Science fiction fans: get ready for a massive erection.

District 9 directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, stars Sharlto Copley. The film starts off as a pseudo documentary, following the happenings of a large alien ship hovering above Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans board the ship and evacuate the alien creatures aboard, who then live on earth for 20 years. The people and government of South Africa are fed up with the alien occupation, and an evacuation plan is formed. Wikus Van De Merwe (played by Copley) is in charge of leading the evacuation, so we are fed the story mainly from his perspective. Shit gets fucking real.

District 9 - Gigantic Ships are how Aliens Deal with Mid-Life Crisis

A private company, Multi-National United (MNU), is in charge of moving the nearly 2 million alien creatures from District 9, which is essentially a large refugee camp. In order to evict the aliens legally, MNU sends out human agents on the ground to give out eviction notices to the aliens (who are also referred to as prawns). All of the prawns are considered working class, and sign the eviction papers without much consideration, until Wikus runs into seemingly the only one with intelligence, Christopher Johnson. Christopher has been excreting a fluid for the 20 year occupation, to fuel a small ship back to the main alien ship, and then return home.

Wikus gets his hands on the fluid, and accidentally sprays himself with it, which was the beginning of the end for him. Unexplained in the film, the exposure to the fluid slowly turns Wikus into an alien-human hybrid. This interests the powers at be at MNU, because in his hybrid state, Wikus is able to use the aliens bio-engineered weapons. Naturally, he wants to turn back to his former human state, and MNU wants to run experiments on him to hopefully find a way to replicate his DNA to man the bio-engineered alien weaponry. Wikus’ slow transformation into an alien state, and MNU’s desire to experiment on him drives the rest of the film.

Wikus Van De Merwe Tells Aliens to Suck it like a Dick

District 9 took an interesting method to explain it’s story. A majority of it was shot as a documentary about Wikus’ transformation into an alien, and his eventual treason, while the rest was shot from a standard third-person perspective. It definitely has a slow climb to a ton of action, but the story is really well structured, and keeps you highly interested. Copley does a brilliant job in his role, and makes you really feel the sense of urgency that his character was going through, trying to reverse his alien transformation.

It does take some time to get there, but when the action comes, it comes hard and keeps coming (unlike this writer in bed). As with any science fiction film, expect some information not to be explained, but there were no obvious points of absurdity (i.e.: Hollywood magic). There are a lot of subtitles, so it might be best not to watch it if you are particularly tired. Also, there are some parts with nasty alien-y matter, but even if you are squeamish, those parts are few and far between.

Wikus is Moments Away from the Big Anal Rape Scene

District 9 is a bad ass film that builds slowly, but keeps you entertained, and then kicks your fucking ass. Definitely want to catch this one in a theater.

Ever wonder what it’d feel like to be all alone, in a space station, on the Moon? Me too! Luckily for you and I, we don’t have to wonder anymore, because director Duncan Jones shows us the light. Unfortunately, it’s not that glamorous, and as anticipated, will make you go bat shit insane. And it seems like even saying, “Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!” will get old after awhile.

Moon takes place sometime in the future, where Astronaut Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is sent to harvest the Moon, to send back deposits to Earth for energy. Lunar Industries hires Sam on a three year contract, to live in the space station located on the Moon. His only companion being a really sophisticated on-board robot, GERTY (voice by Kevin Spacey), which tends to his every need. And, of course, the live communication with Earth is “down”, so the only way Sam can communicate with Earth (namely his wife, Tess) is through recorded video messages.

Sam Bell with his Lovely Co-Star, GERTY

Near the end of his three year contract, there’s some blah blah reason for Sam to go manually work on a problem, so he heads over in his Moon buggy, but experiences a pretty bad accident that knocks him out cold. Oddly in the next scene, with no explanation, we see GERTY tending to Sam, back in the space station. Sam is clearly dazed and confused, but has no injuries from his accident. How curious! Sam overhears an interesting conversation between GERTY and the heads at Lunar Industries, but how could this be? Wasn’t the live communication feed down? If you think that’s odd, get a load of this – the Sam we grew to love, is not the same Sam that showed no injuries back at the station…it was a clone. That’s right – a clone!

Moon is really tough to watch at times. I’m not ADD or anything, but having the vast majority of the dialogue being between Sam Rockwell, and the voice of Kevin Spacey, or Rockwell and a clone of himself, was just tough to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, Rockwell did a great job, all things considered, but this film is definitely not for your average moviegoer. Heh, it was pretty soothing hearing Kevin Spacey was a robot though; if I ever got a personal robot, I always thought the voice would be of some hot chick, but I’d definitely go with Spacey’s voice now.

Moon Movie Poster

The two main themes of the film were evil big business (a common theme nowadays), and cloning, but only cloning was discussed in any length. Lunar Industries really fucked over this guy, and yet there wasn’t one scene – not even one sentence – of “how could they do this to me?” or any resentment out of Sam. That part I never understood. Another thing that kind of took me out of the movie, was how absolutely fake the Moon scenes looked. I understand we’re not going to be filming on the surface of the Moon, but come on…it’s 2009, we should be able to do better.

If you’re a Sci-Fi fan, you’ll probably enjoy the film. It’s really slow paced, and even the intense sequences are really not all that intense. Decent date movie, even if you’re not too into it, ’cause there’s lots of downtime where you can neck, etc.