The Abbs Man’s Abblog | I’ve never had anything important to say……….. Why would I need a blog?!

After he finished Lord of the Rings films if you slapped Peter Jackson’s name on a movie you could most likely guarantee that it would make millions of dollars. This is of course weather he directed it or not. Just as directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo Del Toro have “presented ” films. (Tarantino with Eli Roth’s Hostle and Del Toro with Juan Antonio Bayona’s El Orfanato. ) Jackson “presented” this past weeks release of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. I had been highly anticipating this film weather or not Peter Jackson put his stamp of approval on it for everyone to see. From what I had seen it looked as though it would be presented as if it were a true to life documentary. I was interested to see how the movie would pull this off.

Taking a cue from movies like  American Zombie and  Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon ,which are more modern examples of what they were trying to do, the first part of the movie is presented as if it were an actual documentary then throughout the course of the film it degrades back into the movie itself. It’s like making a movie where you let Werner Herzog direct the first three quarters of it and then bring in Michael Bay to finish it off.

Instead of being almost directly engaged by the characters the viewer is now back comfortably watching the story develop or in these cases come to a conclusion. In these specific instances its almost as if the “mocumentary” style is used to more easily build up characters and their personal stories before letting the climax of the movie, which inevitably changes all these things, snap the viewer back into the movie.  This way the characters actually tell you about themselves rather then giving the viewer the prerogative to figure them out by following the plot of the movie. Other movies which try to present themselves as “in the moment”, the most famous of which would probably be The Blair Witch Project, use a combo of shaky camera and documentary like style to make the movie seem more real. More recent movies like Diary of the Dead, Cloverfield, and [R.E.C.] do both with an ample use of special or makeup effects. They try and cover it all up by appealing to the youtube generation by making it look like they shot in on a handicam and not on a staged set. Don’t get me wrong I like all these movies, ironicaly The Blair Witch Project least of all, but with some of these movies you have to ask in the end was it the right creative choice?

District 9 trys to take the best of both worlds. It takes you into the moment by first presenting you with the significant occurrence of alien contact that has now become common place since they’ve been there for twenty years already by the time the movie starts. Then it slowly almost menacingly focuses in on one character that, after you may or may not have already dismissed him, is now suddenly the main character. It snaps out of documentary mode into Michael Bay mode but in a classier way then Michael Bay would handle it. Throughout the whole movie there is some really sophisticated costuming and CGI and by the end there are some pretty impressive pyrotechnics.

Lots of people like this movie and a lot of other people hate it. Sure it has some plot holes, but as a movie it’s entertaining as all hell. In my opinion it was one of the best movies to come out this summer. It also reinvigorated the scifi movie genre. I don’t think I’ve seen a new original scifi movie that was that good in a while. This was Niell Blomkamp’s first Big movie. It’s only a matter of time till they try and get him presenting movies too. I always think its funny when you look back on Peter Jackson’s career before he started futzing with hobbits. Some of his first movies are amazing. Bad Taste and Dead Alive are two of my favorite movies. If given the choice I’d rather watch those two than his King Kong or Lord of the Rings any day. But that’s just me I guess.

It just goes to show that while it’s all well and good to hit it big in Hollywood and become a big name director and all some of your best work gets done when you’re not taking yourself too seriously yet.

Posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 7:16 pm in the category:Film. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.