District 9 - Avatar for grown-ups

Every now and again, two films with similar themes will come along within a short space of time completely by coincidence - District 9 and Avatar are a prime example of this. Both tell the stories about how a (reasonably) ordinary man ends up getting his life entwined with an alien race and - kind of inadvertently - becoming their saviour.

Avatar still stands as the highest-grossing film of all time, but then it had pretty jungles, cute aliens and gave birth to the 3D culture. I don't begrudge it its success, nor do I hate it - it's just that I LOVE District 9. Here, instead of being set on a far-flung planet, an alien space ship arrives over Johannesburg and its alien crew given `refugee status' on in the city itself. However, after twenty years, the aliens haven't shifted and people are getting pretty mistrustful of them. So, when a camera crew follows in an office pen-pusher to help evict them, he quickly discovers more than he bargained for.

If you're into sci-fi or action then there's no reason you won't enjoy this. The acting is top notch. The direction is superb. You'll care for all the characters and it even manages to make you look upon the (computer-generated) aliens as real people and feel for their plight, too. Then of course it has action, much destruction and incredibly cool weapons. What more does the average sci-fi nut want? More? Okay, how about the face that the story also - not so subtly - plays on existing `racial tensions' around the world - how about that... a little bit of politics and satire thrown into the mix.

Like I say, if you like sci-fi or action then this is for you. Oh, it also has big cool endoskeleton robots which shoot lasers and pigs (seriously), what more can you ask for? Roll on `District 10.'

10/10 The Monty Python Knights of Camelot are currently looking for this