REVIEW: District 9

STARRING: Sharlto Copley View Trailer RELEASE DATE: 08/14/09 DATE SCREENED: 08/05/09 The Verdict GREAT - See it opening weekend

The summer movie season got off to a good start with Wolverine and Star Trek but quickly fizzled. I was intrigued by the trailer for District 9, which does what a good trailer is supposed to do. It only gives you a taste of what the movie is going to be about, instead of giving away parts of the best scenes. Although I was intrigued, after the disappointment I’ve experienced this summer I wasn’t about to get my hopes up too high. After all, District 9 didn’t have any known actors and only a $30 million budget (GI Joe cost $175 million). The only thing the movie had going for it on paper was producer Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings). It turns out that District 9 has a lot more going for it than what you see on paper. I left the theater excited by having seen a great movie that exceeded all my expectations.

28 years prior to the beginning of the film, a giant disabled alien spaceship ends up floating right above Johannesburg South Africa. The aliens on board are sick and transferred to the surface. The aliens are forced to live in a slum called District 9, while the world argues over what to do with them.

In the present day, the aliens live in poverty with Nigerian gangs. They exchange alien technology/goods for cat food and sneak out of the District to steal from others. The South African population refers to them by the racist term of “prawns”. Scientist have been working unsuccessfully to figure out how to use the alien technology, including their weapons. A private company, MNU, is hired to remove the aliens from their slum to a more remote prison like location. By law they must give the aliens 24 hr notice. While serving notice, the lead MNU field agent, Wikus van der Merwe, is infected with an alien virus while examining an alien device. This infection begins to slowly transform him into one of the aliens. Doctors discover that this transformation allows him to fire alien weapons which are activated by DNA. This makes his body a valuable possession to the military, and permission is granted to kill Wikus and harvest his body parts. Of course, this does not sit well with Wikus, and he manages to escape. He runs to District 9 to find the owner of the device that infected him to seek a cure. The owner is an alien who has been named Christopher Johnson. It turns out Christopher has spent the last 28 years working on an escape plan, but needs the device that infected Wikus to finally execute the plan. The device is now locked up tight at MNU headquarters. Wikus agrees to help get the device back, in exchange for a cure.

Wikus steals some alien weaponry that was being hoarded by a Nigerian gang, and then the film kicks into overdrive. Wikus and his new alien friend Christopher attack MNU headquarters to retrieve the device, which it turns out is fuel. Then they must fend off an all out military assault, and a Nigerian gang assault, when they get back to District 9. What was a serious character driven film turns into a kick-ass action movie for the final act. But all the action has a purpose and I really cared about who was going to live and who was going to die. District 9 brilliantly draws you into the story and makes you care about the characters before blowing you away with the action.

The film has much more going for it than just a famous producer. Most important, it has a great script. It attempts to realistically portray what might happen if about a million aliens ended up stranded on Earth. We see how being forced to live on Earth in poverty with no human education has led to deep rooted racism against what is actually a brilliant alien race. College students could write papers on the parallels between this film and apartheid.

The film also has Sharlto Copley playing Wikus going for it. He shows us that he is a great actor, even though this is his very first role. His character is well fleshed out, as we see how he relates to his wife and how he is forced to question his racist beliefs about the “prawns”. Although the aliens are mostly special effects, the relationship between Christopher and his son felt very real.

The special effects are seamless. I don’t know how they managed such stellar special effects on a $30 million budget. The final battle is more intense and well done than what I have seen in movies that cost 5 or 6 times as much.

District 9 is a great movie that needs to be seen opening weekend. It’s rare for a movie to exceed my expectations like this one has. It’s probably the best film I’ve seen all year, and should be a contender come Oscar time.

REVIEW: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

STARRING: Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames View Trailer RELEASE DATE: 08/14/09 DATE SCREENED: 07/27/09 The Verdict NOT GOOD - Wait for cable

I began to lose interest in the show Entourage a couple of seasons ago, but Jeremy Piven’s portrayal of foul-mouthed super agent Ari Gold still manages to keep me tuning in. Piven’s portrayal of Ari has made him a multiple Emmy winner and turned him into the most popular actor on the show. Movie studios have taken notice. They have been trying to come up with the right role to capitalize on Piven’s television success. Some studio executive got the brilliant idea to make a movie featuring Piven as a sleazy car salesman. After all, if he can play a sleazy agent, then playing a sleazy car salesman should give his fans exactly what they are looking for, right? Well, not exactly…

When a failing auto dealership needs a big 4th of July weekend of sales to avoid going out of business, they call in the best team of used car liquidators that money can buy. Led by Don Ready (Piven), this team of used car salesmen promises to train the current staff and sell every single car on the lot by the end of the weekend. They sell cars by day and party at strip clubs by night. They use every dirty trick in the book to sell cars. While Don Ready and his crew are ripping off the public and selling cars, there are also subplots involving possible romances between Don and the auto dealership owner’s daughter, a female member of Don’s crew and the owners’ 10 year old son that looks like an adult, and the owner himself and another one of Don’s male crew members. The latter two subplots are particularly awful.

The only good thing this movie has going for it is the cast. Piven is basically playing Ari Gold selling cars, and he’s good at that character. Ving Rhames, David Koechner, and Kathryn Hahn make up his crew and they do the best they can with the material. They take a lot of bad jokes, and at least deliver them in a way that makes you smile. Otherwise, this movie is easily forgettable. It’s filled with gay jokes, pedophile jokes, racial stereotypes, and general silliness. They must have spent the entire budget on the cast, and nothing on the writing. This film is further proof that you can’t simply take a popular TV character and basically throw him into a movie and it will turn out good. If Piven wants to be a big movie star he is going to have to step out of his comfort zone a little bit and look for a good script. Wait for cable to watch this sorry movie.

REVIEW: A Perfect Getaway

STARRING: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich View Trailer RELEASE DATE: 08/07/09 DATE SCREENED: 08/04/09 The Verdict OK - Wait for the DVD

Anyone who has seen the commercial knows that A Perfect Getaway does not depict the kind of vacation experience that would be featured on the Travel Channel. Newlyweds Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich) think they are about to have the honeymoon of their dreams. They arrive on one of the most remote and picturesque islands of Hawaii for three days of lounging on the beach and hiking the secluded trails. When they stumble upon a group of teenaged hikers discussing the recent murder of a newlywed couple, they begin to get nervous. They immediately suspect a strange couple that they came across earlier in the day hitchhiking may be the murderers.

Cliff & Cydney find some comfort and fun hiking with another couple they meet along the trail, Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez). Nick is ex-military and has all kinds of strange survival stories. When he slaughters a goat and Gina skins it, Cliff & Cydney begin to suspect their new friends may be the killers. But with nowhere to go, the couples must hike together to civilization, and the hitchhikers may be following them. The last couple of miles become the longest miles, as the trip quickly becomes a literal fight for survival.

A Perfect Getaway is a modern “B-movie”. It doesn’t try to be great cinema, but simply entertain an audience for approximately 90 minutes. The movie does have a few thrills and surprises. The problem is that it takes too long to get going, and the surprises aren’t really that surprising. When the characters define the term “red herring” for the audience it’s a dead giveaway that things are not quite as they seem. I expected the film to have some scary scenes, but it’s strictly a thriller. The actors do a commendable job in what they surely looked at as an easy paycheck. The audience at the screening did seem to enjoy the film more than I did, but I can’t recommend spending the money to see this in the theater. It’s an average film, best viewed at home on DVD.