First, off no spoilers, I promise.

District 9 is a fantastic movie but you might not enjoy it. You should see it anyway. I think this is an important movie.

Now, those of you that know me know that I’m a big science fiction fan. I’ve read countless books and stories and watched everything. I’m a hard sell. I think this is one of those movies that truly transcends the genre. The thing about great sci-fi is that it is always about much more than is on the surface, it challenges you, it makes you think. But it’s not always fun.

District 9 is a hard movie to watch because it really touches on significant and painful social issues. I think it hits a nerve. Or three. I understand why you may not enjoy it, but you can’t say isn’t a fantastic movie. Well, you could, but you’d be wrong.

I think that District 9 isn’t an enjoyable movie in the same way most enjoyable movies are enjoyable. It’s not really escapist entertainment. District 9 stabs you right in the eye with sharp scissors right out of the gate. The way it’s shot, with the flat colors, in hand-held documentary style, definitely didn’t produce a lot of eye candy. In fact, I was a bit off-put by this. At first.

Right away it ripped me out of my comfort zone. It’s not pretty or glamorous. It’s not an idealized version of Hollywood reality. It says something about us, our fears, our flaws, our culture. It makes a painful point about who we are.

This could really happen.

That said (the part about it being harder to enjoy than a normal movie I mean) – I enjoyed the hell out of it. I enjoy a well crafted story. Great dialog. Great plot. I actually was surprised a few times by what happened (which, sadly for me, hardly ever happens). There was a couple of times I wanted to stand up and shout, did you see that? Did you? There’s actually a character arc in this movie, the main character learns, and changes, and surprises. He transforms. Don’t see that too often. The character even has a specific moment of epiphany. And I was loving it.

The attention to detail was staggering. I wanted to rewind and watch some parts again. The special effects may be the best I’ve every seen. I forgot about them and just enjoyed the movie. I forgot that the aliens and spaceship were computer generated. Normally, in other movies where there are virtual characters, I never quite forget they’re computer generated. I did in this movie. Probably the only other time that’s happened for me is Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

I’m still thinking about the movie. That never happens to me. (Nearly) ever.

There’s my thoughts on it. So there.

I’m very disappointed to say that this movie sucked donkey snot. It was disjointed, boring, and just a sad, typical, mishmash of committee designed Hollywood fecal matter. You don’t connect with the characters, they just seem stuck in the movie, and are completely one dimensional. Even more so than usual. They completely wasted John Hurt, Kate Blanchett, and Karen Allen (who was great to see in the movie). Not to mention Harrison Ford. Some people think he was too old for this movie. I say, nay nay. This movie failed because of the writing and directing, not because of the acting or the actors age. This movie wasn’t written, it was designed. A committee sat around a conference table and brainstormed over Lattes and Frappuccinos and wrote ideas on a white board – we need an insect scene, a snake reference, a cave with skulls, a scene where they fly over the map, hey lets make Indy all warm and fuzzy and give him a happy family ending.

It’s like they have a database of movie cliche’s and some Mac application where they drag them around in little scene bubbles and connect them up and then print out the script. It’s call Microsoft Movie Cliche Database Professional Enterprise Edition 2008 and it blue screens my machine. Hell, it blue screens the internet.

Oi. The plot. The plot was ridiculous, confusing, and didn’t make sense. I knew we were in trouble from the first scene. The (non-sensical) rocket sled thingy. The refrigerator. Sigh. Though I will say there was a quick visual reference to the first movie that entertained me for about 0.25 seconds until I realized I’d rather be watching the first movie. (ooh, snap!) The ending was like they tacked on the ending from another unrelated movie. Seriously. And I think it was one of the “Mummy” movies. I think I saw Brendan Fraser dressed up as one of the rock throwing tribesmen. Instead of screaming tribal war screams, he was screaming “I hate mummies!”.

Take this plot criticism from someone who is fairly lienient about plot lines, especially if there is a sci-fi element. I will forgive a dumb plot if the rest of the movie holds together, which, in this case, it didn’t. This was like one of those paper towel commercials where they mop up something gelatinous with the leading brand and the brand they’re selling in a head to head wipe off. Off course the “leading” brand disintegrates on contact. And, indeed, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull disintegrated on contact.

There was even these references to Indy’s past during “the war” that I’m like, whu? Huh? Bwah? Did I miss something in the other movies? What in the name of all that’s ancient archeology are they talking about? Did I miss a movie? W!? T!? F!?

The movie really felt like a bunch of scenes chopped together without any transitions – the first movie just flowed and was so fun from start to finish. This was like riding a broken down roller coaster with rusty chipped wheels, missing rails, and creaking supports. It just bangs and jostles you around with no finesse or style. It gets you there, and may be a bit exciting at moments, but only because you think you’re going to fly off the tracks and impale your face on a Ring Toss spike.

This movie didn’t work. At all. It Failed. Epically.

I blame George Lucas. They should take away his movie making license. He really flew the star wars plane into the ground. And now this. George, go jump in a lake. A deep, deep, cold, remote lake. Maybe one with a legendary sea monster hiding in it. If you like I can email you some GPS coordinates. I can arrange a Helicopter pilot.

Oh, and readers, sorry about the Donkey snot comment.

Here’s the teaser. You can download it in high definition if you want. I did.

Looks to me like HD-DVD just lost the war. So maybe it’s time to buy a Blu-Ray player. Maybe the Panasonic DMP-BD10AK. Seems to be getting good reviews on Amazon.com. Some people are buying Sony PS3s and using them. However, I hate Sony. Can’t give them my money.

Any suggestions?

Check out the new Simpson’s Movie website, here. Not long until the movie is out!

Haven’t seen the flick Tenatious D yet but this clip completely busted my gut. All over the floor. I’ll spare you the clean up details.

BTW, check out the website – it’s chock full of laughables. That O should be the size of my head!

So they’re making a Halo movie. Here’s some very very cool short movies made by the director, Neill Blomkamp. Check em’ out.

I’m tolerant of bad sci-fi movies but here’s three that just offend me they were so bad (in no particular order):

• Ghosts of Mars: this had a decent cast except for Ice Cube who didn’t act as much as show up in his workout pants and act all tough and gansta. Spare me. The plot and special effects were so bad I couldn’t believe it. Skip this one. I barely consider this sci-fi. This was just terrible.
• Battlefield Earth: this tops my list of worst movies. L Ron Hubbard wrote this book. Maybe that should be enough to warn you off of this. I think it was some sort of Scientology experiment in movie making which explains John Travolta begin in it. He’s too good to be in this movie. Boy, I bet he’s embarrassed. This was so bad it wasn’t even much fun to make fun of.
• Event Horizon: This movie starts off pretty cool but ends up in a gory horror film which just lost me. I hated it.

I just noticed that two of these movies were John Carpenter movies. Note to self. No. More. John. Carpenter. Movies.

War of the Worlds Spoiler Alert! Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

I watched Spielberg’s War of the Worlds over the weekend. My love of sci-fi won over my loathing of Tom Cruise and I watched it anyway, despite my vow to avoid Mr Crazy Couch Hopper. Some parts of this movie were very good. I like the point of view of the every man trying to save his family. The special effects were fantastic. I really liked the part where the first tripod crawled out from under New York. The aliens looked *mostly* real in the basement scene, though I look forward to the day where movies don’t transition back and forth, into and out of, the digitally animated parts. It’s so obvious. That said, I suspended my disbelief long enough to enjoy it. I thought the happy ending was a little too much though. I thought the son shouldn’t have been there. Some ambiguity would have been better. I think I actually said “oh brother” out loud when father and son hugged and everything was all better. I suppose it’s a Spielberg family film, so I can forgive this.

Here’s my problem with this movie. It didn’t make sense. I thought the whole bit about the tripods begin buried was just completely ridiculous. Why would the aliens bury them a bazillion years ago? If they were visiting our planet back then with all this massive hardware, why didn’t they just wipe us out then? Or wipe out Neanderthal man? Didn’t the voice over at the beginning tell us how much smarter the aliens were than us? Would burying these be the most inefficient way possible of exterminating humans on the planet? Why wait until there are billions of humans? Humans with fighter planes and tanks and bazookas? And if they did bury them so many billions of years ago, how did they know Humans would be a threat? If they’re so smart, why haven’t they heard of isolating themselves from the environment? From unknown disease or toxins? Have they never heard of an airlock or a space suit? They don’t seem very smart to me. Sure they built some fantastic equipment, but they sure seem dumb to me. If they’re so smart, and they’re so advanced, why use weapons at all? Why not just tailor a virus triggered by human DNA and just wiped us out from orbit? For that matter, just shoot us with giant ray guns from orbit? I guess there’s something about them needing human blood to terraform Earth to their needs, but that is probably the lamest part of the whole movie. It’s seems like a cheap ploy to make the aliens even more scary. It’s never really even explained. Also there are billions of people on this planet. They expect me to believe that these tripod things are really going to track down and kill everyone essentially one at a time? Do you know how big of a number billion is? This would take a long long long long time. Trust me.

Anyway, all this stuff didn’t add up once I thought about it for five minutes after I watched the movie. Though the truth be told, I did enjoy it. Even if it had Tom Cruise in it.

Here’s the short version of a great movie, The Big Lebowski. Warning. Lots of effing f words.

‘‘There’s a scene where Tom (Cruise) gets beaten up pretty badly. And the test audience clapped. It was kind of weird.” — a Paramount Pictures insider on the audience reaction at a Mission: Impossible III test screening

I got the quote here.

Ask me which movie I’m more likely to see, Snakes on a Plane, or MI3? Well, neither. Unless Tom Cruise was on the plane and got swollowed whole by a Anaconda in the first five minutes, then I’d watch Snakes on a Plane. At least the first five minutes. Until the Anaconda sits back in its chair, rubs its Tom Cruise shaped snake belly, burps like beer drinking frat boy, and says “that’s some tasty Tom Cruise. I loves me some tasty Tom Cruise.”

I’d buy THAT for a dollar.