I know some deviants have asked me if I'd seen District 9 so...yeah, I did, but I've been camping for most of the weekend, so I didn't have time to really post any sort of review until now.

PREMISE / STORYTELLING:
On its surface, the film's premise seems like a badly-constructed metaphor for apartheid. But in reality, District 9 is nothing less than some of the fiercest cinematic satire I've seen in a long time. While Johannesberg and its apartheid history do serve as backdrop to the film's events, the satire reaches much farther than that. Not only do the alien's camps represent institutionalized cruelty at its most extreme, but Multi-National United's alien dissection labs are a disturbing allusion to Dr. Mengele's human experimentation at Auschwitz, and the propaganda that MNU spreads across the airwaves pokes fun at the sensationalism that has become a staple of cable news shows.
Unfortunately, the movie does suffer from what seem to be some several slight narrative holes. The battle scenes near the end suffer from a penchant for crowd-pleasing chaos (as most action scenes do), and it's never explained why the aliens were allowed to bring so much of their own weaponry down to the surface of our planet in the first place. Important characters also have a tendency to simply run into one another with little or no explanation at times, but these are small problems for an otherwise perfectly-constructed film.
CINEMATOGRAPHY / SPECIAL FX:
Without a doubt, District 9's aliens represent some of the most awe-inspiring CGI characters ever created. I was blown away by how realistically and emotionally the aliens were rendered, and how perfectly they interacted with their surroundings and their human counterparts.
Once again, my only complaint is a small one. The exploding-body gore effects that become increasingly common near the end of the film are noticeably CGI. For a film produced by Peter Jackson, responsible for some of the meatiest gore scenes I've ever seen, human bodies disentegrating into nothing but a small spray of red liquid seemed to lack both imagination and, well, mass. While I've never been a huge fan of unnecessary gore, the shredding of human bodies just seemed like an effect that should have required a bit more detailed CGI.
ACTING / CHARACTER DESIGN:
The emotional and physical transformation of Sharlto Copley's character, Wikus van de Merwe, is fascinating, and the film would not have been able to succeed without him giving his character a strong on-screen presence. And while some of the other characters occasionally begin to slide towards more typical movie characters (the sadistic mercenary leader, the superstitious African military leader, etc.), it's obvious that all of the actors are working hard in the roles that they're given.
OVERALL:
Overall, District 9 is one of the most imaginative sci-fi film to come along in a long time, and is a biting satire of humans' penchant for institutionalized cruelty against one another.


Tomorrow I'll update this with my first impressions of the new Avatar trailer, and also some of my questions to you guys regarding your thoughts on what to expect from the film.