Saw District 9 Thursday at a screening sponsored by aintitcool.com and was blown away...one of the most intense, provocative and disturbing movies I've seen in many many years. It's a very cynical, but IMO right on, evaluation of how we treat those who are different from us. The political and social allegories are contained within a well-made suspenseful "action" movie although this is much more intelligent and non-cliche than 99.9 percent of action movies, esp. SF ones. Several gut-wrenching scenes that almost reduced me to sobs. The movie also features one of the most complex lead characters - a person who doesn't have a simple "bad guy to good guy" arc, but is much more fleshed out. It's a very depressing film and even though some folks laughed at some scenes, I think there is only one scene that inspires laughter, and I'll bet Peter Jackson had a hand in it as it resembles the humor from his films such as Bad Taste, Dead-Alive, and Meet the Feebles. But other than that one "laugh" this is a grim and disheartening film, although bloody brilliant and, in a certain way, entertaining at times. Definitely not for the squeamish, esp. if Cronenberg's The Fly made you queasy. Extremely violent, both physically and emotionally. The final shot in the film just tears you apart - it is so tenderly poignant yet so horrifically tragic.
