district 9

wow, what a movie! i went in to this one expecting a reality style film with some strange aliens. turns out its an amazing action movie with a really deep message about race relations.
the story picks up 10 years after aliens arrive on our planet. they are stuck here because their ship is broken. their mothership has been hovering over johannesburg in africa all this time, and they are trying to live on our planet with the hope of someday fixing the ship and heading home. the harsh reality of their arrival though, is that we humans do not except them and instead have banished them to live in a containment camp. the movie begins as the aliens are being forced to move from the current camp into a different location away from the city, because their prescience there has brought crime and ruined that part of town. we follow a government worker as he goes around the camp informing the aliens that they must relocate. well, things start to go a bit wrong, as one might expect, and this government worker gets caught up in it.
needless to say, this film is an allegory of african apartheid and shows just how wretched it really was. the message is amazingly portrayed as the treatment of the aliens is gut wrenching. the film itself does a really great job of starting in a reality film style, but shifting to a standard movie, and back again really well. we feel so strongly for these aliens as the film also makes us reevaluate how we treat each other.