Movie Update

First off, I saw "District 9" last night. Best movie I've seen all year. Drop everything and go see it immediately. Not only does it involve aliens — which in and of itself should make you want to see it — it's an expertly done social commentary on man's cruelty in the name of science and the racism that seems inherent in all humans. The movie is set in Johannesburg and is shot like a documentary. The set up is that an alien spacecraft stalled out above Johannesburg in the 1980s and when humans finally were sent up to the ship, they found thousands of half-starved aliens, which were then relocated into a refugee camp in District 9 of the city. District 9 has become a slum and the people of Johannesburg hate the aliens and want them relocated. So a private company, whose primary business is weaponry, is hired to relocate the aliens in a camp to be called District 10 about 200 kilometers outside the city. And that's where the movie begins. It's impossible to do it justice in a paragraph. Go see it and tell me what you think. As a warning, my boyfriend hated it. He said it was the worst movie he's ever seen. Then again, his favorite movie is "Superbad." So maybe if you're a New York Italian dude who hates to read and just finished watching all five seasons of The Wire back-to-back, this movie isn't for you.

I also saw "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" recently. Listen, I know it's getting a lot of bad reviews, but you gotta know what you're getting when you go in. I mean, this isn't Shakespeare, people. It's G.I. Joe — Yo Joe!s and all. I liked it. Everyone in my party liked it. We didn't love it. We didn't think it was the best movie of the year. We didn't think it should win all kinds of Academy Awards. But it was good. Some of the back stories were stupid. But everything with Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was awesome, so if you see if for no other reason, see it for them. They could have used a few more fighting chicks, though — ones that didn't have a love story attached. As if women only go to war to find love.