* * *
District Nine – rm – If you like alien movies where the alien looks like a 10 foot lumbering ant like object with human qualities, this movie may be for you. It has some familiar themes of a gigantic spacecraft arriving at earth and this time it ends up hovering over Johannesburg South Africa. Over a million refugees from it live in shacks in an area called District Nine and are about to be moved to a more rural area by a non-governmental para- military agency. The main character of the movie is in charge of carrying out this move but he gets accidentally sprayed by an alien chemical, which begins to slowly turn him into an alien. Since the alien’s weapons, most of which have been confiscated can only be fired by the aliens (a bioconnectviity link) and since this man now has an alien arm, he is a rare individual who can fire these weapons. The plot thickens and includes a cute child alien, the wish of the aliens to go home, some battle scenes with conventional and state of the alien weaponry. The special effects are as expected and the movie generates a reasonable amount of suspense. It touches on some issues of discrimination but not in any depth. This is not for everyone. (2009)