District 9

I'm not really a sci-fi person, but this movie was great. It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica (the TV series)... political message wrapped in a sci-fi skin.

Basically, the movie was about aliens that land here... their spaceship stalls overtop of Johanasburg, South Africa. The government took 1.8 million of them and put them into a shanty town concentration camp of sorts, put numbers on them and controlled them, not letting them out amongst the people. And all they wanted to do was go home. OK, maybe there's no 'basically' about this movie... it is a little complex... but the parallels to history of maybe the jews or blacks is uncanny... and that's where the message comes in. Between the government's non-value of their lives to corralling them like animals, forcing them to live in squalor to disecting them for information (again with the parallels), it gets ugly when they try to move them further out of the city to make the humans feel better. So they basically make them mad... and that's where the sequel comes in. In the lead role is a virtual unknown... what a fantastic job he does. If they gave awards to movies of this caliber (Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.)... this would win. Great acting, great computer-generated action sequences... blood and guts... ugly but endearing aliens... you can't help rooting for them. I'm looking forward to the sequel, which I'm sure is not far behind. And a franchise is born. I give this 4 petunias out of 5... I may have to pluck one from Julie and Julia... totally not in the same league.