I went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats on Sunday and walked away from the cinema a bit disappointed.

The basis of the story is gold – the CIA’s attempts in the mid-80s to create super-psychic-spies who could stop a goat’s heart just by staring at it (no shit – this stuff actually happened).  And it’s all based on a book by Jon Ronson, who also wrote the awesome: Them: Adventures with Extremists. However, the people behind the film managed to bolt together a ramshackle plot that makes less than no frikkin sense, and consequently the whole thing is a big fat goat mess. Like the kind of stuff that passes for food at the Notting Hill Carnival.

And until four minutes ago I wanted to make a film called The Men who stare at Goaty Beards, but it’s already been (very badly) done by Jimmy Fallon:

This week really isn’t going according to plan.

I went to the press screening of District 9 three weeks ago, but only got around to writing the review for Fortean Times yesterday. Sadly I didn’t spend a hell of a lot of time on it and it’s not my greatest piece of work, but I thought I’d post it up here anyway…

The Internet buzz for District 9 has been so great that the film itself was always going to have a lot to live up to.

Part faux-documentary, part indie sci-fi, District 9 is the first film from writer/director Neill Blomkamp (with Peter Jackson on production duties). Populated by a cast of virtual unknowns, the basic premise is that twenty years ago, alien refugees came down to Earth and landed in South Africa. Unable to leave, the titular ‘District 9’ becomes their makeshift home on the edge of a disturbingly bleak Johannesburg.

Neither the locals nor the government want them there. So the job of keeping them fenced in has been contracted out to a private firm, Multi-National United (MNU), whose interest lies more in exploiting the potential pay-ticket that their advanced alien weaponry has to offer.

With growing public unrest, the decision is made to relocate the 1.8 million aliens to a new trumped-up refugee camp, far outside the city limits. And as he’s married to the boss’ daughter, office geek Wilkus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is tasked with heading up the team.

Understandably, the aliens aren’t particularly happy about all this. Inter-species tensions are high and the racial and xenophobic allegories aren’t exactly hard to find.

Nicknamed ‘prawns’, the aliens are portrayed as a lazy, uninspired and feral species – with a bizarre penchant for cat food. And yet, the relationship between the central alien character and his son elicits more emotion and tenderness than anything the humans have to offer. So it’s not long before you find yourself rooting for the cosmic crustaceans.

Blomkamp made his name directing ads, including the Citroen ‘Transformers’ one from a few years ago. But thankfully his leap to the big screen is a world away from Michael Bay’s effort earlier this year.

He tries to cover some very big issues in District 9, and succeeds for the most part without ever descending into greeting card schmaltz. And although the second half’s cat-and-mouse chase doesn’t live up to the more cerebral first half, it’s still a very impressive debut.

Rating: 4/5