District 9

Cast
Sharlto Copley
Jason Cope
Nathalie Boltt
Sylvaine Strike
John Sumner
William Allen Young
Nick Blake
Jed Brophy
Louis Minnaar
Vanessa Haywood
Screenwriters
Neill Blomkamp
Terri Tatchell
Director
Neill Blomkamp
Running Time
112 minutes

Over twenty 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 creatures 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. The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when a human field operative, Wikus van der Merwe, 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. (Sony Pictures)

Wow!

(500) Days of Summer

Cast
Joseph Gordon Levitt
Zooey Deschanel
Clark Gregg
Minka Kelly
Rachel Boston
Matthew Gray Gublert
Chloe Moretz
Screenwriters
Scott Neustadter
Michael H. Weber
Director
Marc Webb
Running Time
95 minutes

This is a story of boy meets girl, begins the wry, probing narrator of 500 Days of Summer, and with that the film takes off at breakneck speed into a funny, true to life and unique dissection of the unruly and unpredictable year-and-a-half of one young man’s no-holds-barred love affair.[Metacritic]

When you get to your seat and there are two girls in the row in front waving their feet in the air you know you're in trouble, the film starts and they're checking their phone and talking through 80-90% of the film and when you realise that you are calculating that percentage, well it was just a bad experience. Had the film been better would I have concentrated more on it and not noticed them and indeed would they have stopped talking and watched it. Moments when they stopped talking, you think, am I finding this part better because they stopped and I can concentrate or is this part really a better bit which in turn has got them to stop and watch it. I'm not sure I can score this because I didn't get to watch it properly, if I had to it would be two stars. It was interesting and inventive but didn't really work, I wasn't emotionally invested in his problems whether that was because of the talking I don't know but the story was too broken up and didn't give me time to settle in and get to know the characters. Maybe if I get to see it again some time I'll think differently. Cinemas aren't ideal places to see films I'd much rather see them alone.

Inglourious Basterds

Cast
Brad Pitt
Melanie Laurent
Eli Roth
Michael Fassbender
Diane Kruger
Daniel Bruhl
Til Schweiger
Omar Doom
Screenwriter
Quentin Tarantino
Director
Quentin Tarantino
Running Time
152 minutes

In the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa. Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, lieutenant Aldo Raine organizes a group of Jewish American soldiers to perform swift, shocking acts of retribution. Later known to their enemy as "the basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquis, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own. (The Weinstein Company)

I enjoyed it and the story moved in directions that I didn't expect but time and time again scenes went on for far too long. You could see where the scene was headed but Quentin just kept drawing it out more and more. Like humour tension in a thriller needs the right timing and he repeatedly stretched situations beyond their breaking point.