Anyone see District 9 yet? Such a great movie.
The plot itself was pretty generic (pretty much Blood Diamond + Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which are, in themselves, kind of generic), but the acting, script, and universe that was created are amazing. There was a good 45 continuous minutes or so where I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat with my mouth open.
It's hard to explain the plot without opening up the spoiler tags, but you can call most of the major events as you're watching them. But the action is pure awesome, i.e. a gun that shoots lightning and causes people to explode in tiny meat chunks. There's also a mech that Wikus (the unfortunately named main character) controls that shoots a taser type amo. Except, instead of a pin, a spear head a good 2 inches wide is shot, and proceeds to explode. Wikus also shoots a pig (there's a debate on whether the pig was picked up by the mech's gravity gun or there is a gun that can fire pigs).
The camera work in the first part is great; the premise of the movie is that they're making a documentary on Wikus, so you get erratic camera work mixed in with some interviews mixed with some security camera footage. What I hated was that it was shot like that throughout the movie, which doesn't work when Wikus is supposed to be alone or when there shouldn't be a camera around.
The special effects are great, although you never really get a sense that there's 1.5 million aliens (the number claimed at the beginning of the film). Otherwise, everything blends in perfectly.
Overall, I loved it. Not terribly original, but it's so well acted, writtened and pretty well directed.I highly recommend seeing if you get the chance.