Has it really been a month to the day since I last wrote about a set of DVDs I’d been watching?!
You’d think I might have a lot of catching up to do… When in fact, I haven’t had an awful lot of time or energy to commit to keeping up with what’s been falling through my door (yes, sitting down requires a degree of effort).
District 9 – I’m sure I read somewhere that this was supposedly a prequel to Elysium, which I watched (and didn’t like) a few weeks earlier. There are similarities and perhaps they’re born within the same universe but it should go without saying that Elysium was made afterwards.
During my second viewing of this film, I was able to move on from the fact that the aliens looked like overgrown prawns and it wasn’t a bad film. There was enough to keep me interested and it’s the only notable performance I’m aware of from South African actor Sharlto Copley (who was also in Elysium).
I’m really struggling to remember much about the film as it’s been three or four weeks now since I last watched it but I found myself asking a lot of the questions you might expect from a sci-fi film, like how the heck were the humans supposedly able to understand these super-strength aliens? Perhaps the fact that I can’t remember much tells you something – although, I do recall having to wait until my fifth viewing before returning it as impromptu naps had prevented me from seeing certain scenes throughout subsequent views.
It’s not nearly as bad or annoying as Mars Attacks, put it that way!
Fury – this was a film I saw advertised in the cinema several times last year, as I awaited for my chosen feature to begin (come to think of it, I haven’t been there now for well over a month…). There was enough to grab me in the trailer alone and yet I made a mistake in considering this might’ve been a sequel Inglorious Basterds, simply because Brad Pitt‘s character bears both a vocal and physical similarity to his role in the Tarrantino film.
It’s a film that didn’t disappoint me and I’ve since read that it was quite heavily criticised for apparently attempting to be the new Saving Private Ryan… I’m not even going to attempt to compare those films. But if I was to be critical then I might point my finger at something I could label ‘Video Game Hero Syndrome‘, which is something that plagues a number of films in which the main protagonist is able to withstand a large number of bullets and injuries while his enemies will drop after a single shot.
I found the story to be almost inspiring as the main group under focus here were certainly courageous, in spite of their limitations. Does that make the events unrealistic? I don’t know, I fortunately did not have to experience such events during the Second World War! But I would recommend it.
District 9, perhaps less so.
Thanks for reading!
