Video

District 9

Medium-budget science fiction film about an extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth took the box office by storm this past summer. Twenty-eight years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The beings were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa's "District 9" as the world's nations argued over what to do with them. Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens' welfare - they are only interested in the tremendous profits they'll get if they can make the aliens' awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA, and with the sanction of the government, they decide to evict the aliens and move them to another camp further away from the city. The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable - he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Ostracized and friendless, there is only one place left for him to hide: "District 9." The filmmakers chose to make the film using hand-held cameras and cinema verite interviewing techniques to add to the realism.

Director: Neill Blomkamp. Stars: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt, Sylvaine Strike, John Sumner, William Allen Young, Vanessa Haywood, Marian Hooman. 2009, 112 mins., science fiction.

(500) Days of Summer

An offbeat romantic comedy about a woman (Zooey Deschanel) who doesn't believe true love exists, and the young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who falls for her. This postmodern love story is never what we expect it to be - it's thorny yet exhilarating, funny and sad, a twisted journey of highs and lows that doesn't quite go where we think it will. When Tom (Gordon-Levitt), a hapless greeting-card copywriter and hopeless romantic, is blindsided after his girlfriend Summer (Deschanel) dumps him, he shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days "together" to try to figure out where things went wrong. His reflections ultimately lead him to finally rediscover his true passions in life.

Director: Marc Webb. Stars: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Rachel Boston, Matthew Gray Gubler, Chloe Moretz. 2009, 105 mins., comedy.