In the Movies!

There have been some great movies lately yeah?

I remember when I was a kid good movies were rare. You waited and waited and treasured them when they appeared because the Early-to-mid-nineties were a kind of celluloid wasteland.

Not-so-anymore!

Here are two upcoming movies that look cool: District 9 and Tron 2.

I'll deal with the District first; its a Peter Jackson movie, and based on previous form we would expect something big and dramatic (a lá Lord of the Rings and King Kong) but lately Jackson has been getting a little bit quirky (Cloverfield) and this latest film looks extremely quirky. The premise is intriguing; Humanity has made contact with Extraterrestrial life and waits, expectantly for the giant flying saucers of benevolent aliens or bloodthirsty conquerors to appear, but nothing happens. It turns out that ET has seen it all before and doesn't much care. Then after a decade or so, a steady stream of alien refugees start to arrive, unsurprisingly no national government wants to take responsibility for them and so they end up in slums primarily in South Africa. So our set up is basically "What if illegal aliens were actual aliens?" Isn't that just a neat idea? The film looks set to tap into the best traditions of Science Fiction as a method for analogy by using fantastical aliens to make a film about the grim realities of apartheid.

Tron 2, on the other hand, appears to have no such depth; it just looks cool. The original was famous for its then-revolutionary use of computer generated graphics but the comparatively low-budget for its sequel means that this is unlikely to be the case this time round. Instead this movie relies upon the gorgeously sleek but gritty style of its neon world to impress its audience. The script is likely to be typical popcorn stuff but the visuals are stunning.

I declare that Movies= Awesome