Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Michael_Elliott Alive in Joburg (2005) *** (out of 4)Neill Blomkamp's short film is basically what we would eventually see in DISTRICT 9 as a group of aliens land on Earth looking for a place to live.Is this movie flawless? Not even close but it's extremely well-made and it makes you really impressed with what the director was able to do with such a small budget. We get an interview with one of the actors and this here is just the structure for what's going on in the "outside" world where we then see footage of the aliens as well as news footage of the events going on. Blomkamp is very creative in the way he edits all of the footage together and he does a very good job with very little money. Fans of DISTRICT 9 will certainly want to check this out.

ShortoftheWeek This impressive short takes a documentary form, but it's definitely no Christopher Guest style mockumentary. Instead it's got aliens—really realistic looking ones, with mech-style "bio-suits". Set in an imaginary South Africa where aliens have landed and taken up residence, Alive in Joburg poses as a documentary intent on examining how life has changed for residents there, interchanging interviews with realistic CG. The visuals are excellent and while the film's attempt to equate the aliens reception by locals with South Africa's Apartheid era are somewhat transparent, any attempt at social metaphor earns kudos from me.The director, Neill Blomkamp, is celebrated for his advertising work, and won for himself— based largely on this short I would presume—the directing gig for the new Halo film. I must say, based on this film, it looks like a truly inspired choice.Check out all of our weekly reviews at ShortoftheWeek.com

afterlife-2 The folks at spy films have managed to waste a whole bunch of money again on a piece of junk movie with awful animations. The movie is in regard to a landing of aliens in Africa where they than are treated awfully and live under bad conditions. Althoguh the plot could possibly be taken and used to make some what of a feature length film the film just shows the amount of crummy work produced by spy films. Apparently hearsay says one of their directors is scheduled to be directing the halo movie which will no doubt to turn out to become one of the box offices biggest BOMBS. It's times like this you wish Canadian film companies actually spent some time to look at the junk their putting out and tried to properly compete with American ones. All in all not a very good flick

Michael DeZubiria It is easy to see Neill Blomkamp's directorial skills in this short film, which runs kind of like a news broadcast documentary that gives a peek into the frightening situation in a South African town after some not so pleasant aliens have set up permanent residence there. It is a kind of journalistically objective look at how the lives of the local townspeople have been altered, mostly for the worse, by the arrival of the aliens. Visually, it is a stunningly effective film, especially with the mother ships floating just over the skyline, and the film is packed with one unsettling image after another. Having been signed on by Peter Jackson to film the highly anticipated screen adaptation of the wildly popular video game Halo, it is easy to see from this film why he was chosen despite having almost no directing experience at all to take on what will surely be a hugely popular film.