District 9
Went to see it the other night as it was cheap movie night at various cinemas.
Unfortunately, it wasn't playing at the cinema I prefer to patronise, so I ended up going to one of the megacomplexes I don't like all that much.
The queues were fifty people long and took fifteen minutes to get through to get a ticket, meaning that by the time I'd actually got one there was no time to requeue another fifteen to twenty minutes for popcorn.
The display board which showed what was playing that night didn't actually have District 9 listed on it, so the entire time I was in the queue I was expecting to hear "Oh, our website session times are complete lies and we're not showing that," mainly because I've run into that problem at that particular cinema before. Fortunately, thirty seconds before I got to the front of the queue, someone in the back room figured out how to add the film to the board. Mind you, by this time the session had technically already started, even if it was still just playing commercials.
I got assigned a seat, which I hate, but it turned out there was someone else sitting in it anyway, so I said "Screw this" and took my popcornless self over to a much better-placed seat. The seat itself was quite nice, even if the auditorium-sized theatre wasn't really my cup of tea.
The movie... eh. Got a lot of high ratings from critics, but from my perspective the social commentary was not so much ladled on as something you had to try and avoid drowning in. Subtle it wasn't. Vaguely interesting choice of having a lot of the movie made up from 'footage' from various security cameras, news choppers, and in-the-field soldier-cams. Something of a stylistic choice, I think, although honestly I was fairly neutral about it.
The CGI was near-flawless. The emphasis was not only on realism, but realism in a dusty, gritty, chopper-newscam environment. There were very few of the "Look at the size of my CGI engine!" cinematic moments that have been done and overdone since CGI started being a workhorse. The CGI background characters were just that - background. They didn't get extra screen time or shot composition which detracted from the foreground action.
All in all, it's not something I'd go see twice. District 9 seemed to be much more trying to a be a serious social commentary movie than a SF blockbuster. It wasn't so much entertaining, I think, as attempting to be educational and appeal to awards-granters and industry reviewers. Which isn't a bad thing to be, it's just not what I went to the movies looking for.
Unfortunately, it wasn't playing at the cinema I prefer to patronise, so I ended up going to one of the megacomplexes I don't like all that much.
The queues were fifty people long and took fifteen minutes to get through to get a ticket, meaning that by the time I'd actually got one there was no time to requeue another fifteen to twenty minutes for popcorn.
The display board which showed what was playing that night didn't actually have District 9 listed on it, so the entire time I was in the queue I was expecting to hear "Oh, our website session times are complete lies and we're not showing that," mainly because I've run into that problem at that particular cinema before. Fortunately, thirty seconds before I got to the front of the queue, someone in the back room figured out how to add the film to the board. Mind you, by this time the session had technically already started, even if it was still just playing commercials.
I got assigned a seat, which I hate, but it turned out there was someone else sitting in it anyway, so I said "Screw this" and took my popcornless self over to a much better-placed seat. The seat itself was quite nice, even if the auditorium-sized theatre wasn't really my cup of tea.
The movie... eh. Got a lot of high ratings from critics, but from my perspective the social commentary was not so much ladled on as something you had to try and avoid drowning in. Subtle it wasn't. Vaguely interesting choice of having a lot of the movie made up from 'footage' from various security cameras, news choppers, and in-the-field soldier-cams. Something of a stylistic choice, I think, although honestly I was fairly neutral about it.
The CGI was near-flawless. The emphasis was not only on realism, but realism in a dusty, gritty, chopper-newscam environment. There were very few of the "Look at the size of my CGI engine!" cinematic moments that have been done and overdone since CGI started being a workhorse. The CGI background characters were just that - background. They didn't get extra screen time or shot composition which detracted from the foreground action.
All in all, it's not something I'd go see twice. District 9 seemed to be much more trying to a be a serious social commentary movie than a SF blockbuster. It wasn't so much entertaining, I think, as attempting to be educational and appeal to awards-granters and industry reviewers. Which isn't a bad thing to be, it's just not what I went to the movies looking for.