What wonderful bookends. While it wasn't the first big movie of the summer, Star Trek opened in early May, and became a blockbuster success, eventually grossing over $250 million and becoming the highest grossing entry in the series, even adjusted for inflation. Aside from its massive ticket sales, the movie was also a critical smash, earning top marks from many critics, myself included. And while it's not the last movie of the summer, District 9 feels like the last great entry of this summer's cinema. It's also the first movie I've seen since Star Trek that has made me feel as deeply or as effectively.

District 9 is based on director Neill Blomkamp's short Alive in Joburg (a short that impressed Peter Jackson so thoroughly that he offered Blomkamp the directing gig on the halted Halo feature film). The short detailed the interactions between humans in Johannesburg (or Joburg for short) and a population of alien refugees. The feature starts in a similar fashion, with several talking heads detailing the history of the alien craft arriving in Joburg, the government discovering that it is full of refugees, and their being put up in what is now known as District 9. It also shows how District 9 went from a temporary housing facility to a complete slum, infested both with aliens (derogatorily referred to as "prawns") and Nigerian criminals. The plot proper begins when we learn that MNU, a multi-national corporation that controls District 9, is planning on relocating all the prawns in the district to a new facility, further away from Joburg and its unhappy human population. As one might imagine, tensions are already high, and the threat of relocation may not be taken all too well by the inhabitants of District 9.

I'm hesitant to get into the specifics of the plot, because Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell have put together a story that rewards untainted viewing. That's not to say the movie is littered with twists and turns, but rather that the characters and situation are so compelling that telling you instead of letting you experience it for yourself would be doing you and the movie a disservice. Suffice it to say that Blomkamp makes you feel for characters, both human and alien, and has several sequences that had me on the edge of my seat, not even daring to breath in case I missed what happened next.

On top of all that, you've got a social subtext that is ripe for exploration. Johannesburg, being in South Africa, still ripples with the echoes of apartheid. By making the aliens the target of persecution, it removes the pre-built bias that people have about specific groups of people, and allows everyone to see these prejudices for what they are. Many accusations are made about the "prawns," as they're called (the actual name of the species isn't used, or, if it is, so briefly that it's immediately forgotten), from them being dirty to being thieves to being murderers. But, over the course of the film, they appear far more as put-upon and neglected, with unique individuals given the spotlight at various points. As things unfold, the audience gains more perspective about the aliens and the humans in an illuminating fashion.

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