GRAN TURISMO**

There's an essay to be written on what happens to spiky independent directors who sell-out to dumb franchise movies, cf Ben Wheatley's MEG 2 and Neill Blomkamp (formerly of the superb DISTRICT 9 and CHAPPIE) helming this piss-poor piece of product merchandising.  It's hard to see anything of Blomkamp's political satire and visual artistry in GRAN TURISMO. Instead, we get a painfully tired, cliched, nakedly commercial, underdog sports film about a sim racer turned actual real life racing driver, based on a true story.

There are many flaws with this film, and a ham-fisted script is the largest one. Second, we have a cast basically phoning it in (that's you David Harbour), or playing it one shot shy of a camp Bond villain (Orlando Bloom). But the real problem is that the racing doesn't excite. I love a bit of F1 and have watched many an autosport movie. It says a lot that you can stage scenes at some iconic tracks - not least the beast of the Nurburgring - and not set my pulse racing. I think the problem is that Blomkamp doesn't distinguish between sim and real racing. In fact, he does the opposite. He makes real racing feel like sim-racing by adding on visual trackers and taking away any real life feel for track noise and atmosphere. When I watch a racing movie, I want to feel the heat, the sound, the the tension, the stakes. I want to smell the burning rubber.  This film gave me none of that.

Still, I am awarding the film two stars. One for its young lead actor Archie Madekwe who puts in an earnest and compelling central performance. And one for the comedy value of seeing real-life F1 Principal's wife and ex-Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell uttering the immortal line "these lentils are nice".

GRAN TURISMO has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.

DISTRICT 9 - a re-review

So some nice movie folk sent me a DISTRICT 9 BluRay disc and I took the opportunity to rewatch one of the most original sci-fi flicks of the year. I haven't fundamentally changed my opinion of the movie, which you can read here. The movie is two thirds superb satire of South African politics; brilliantly conceived mockumentary; and re-casting of the sci-fi genre. I still love the down and dirty look of the film. I still admire the way that the director and co-writer, Neill Blomkamp, balances comedy and action. And I still think that shot of the alien spaceship hovering over Jo-burg is iconic. Admittedly, I also still think that the final third of the film descends into a mindless shootemup/buddy movie that's entertaining but in a more lo-rent way than the first two thirds of the film.

The plus point of the BD disc is that special effects flicks really do look cool on HD - even a special effects flick that's fundamentally fighting against the Hollywood-glossy look. As for the extras, the director's commentary is also pretty insightful. You get the feeling that Blomkamp knew exactly what he wanted for this film, and it's pretty amazing that he took on such a technically ambitious project for his first feature. You also get to find out how he got involved with Peter Jackson, and thus got the funding to turn his short into a feature. I was most fascinated by his anecdotes about how the political situation in South Africa fed into the movie - sometimes in an unforeseen manner. For instance, it was after shooting began that the violence against Zimbabwean refugees took place - violence that echoes the reaction of the poor South Africans toward the "prawns" in the flick.

There's also around 90 minutes worth of short docs explaining everything from the improvisation process to the sound design, CGI special effects and old-fashioned prosthetics. As with all of these kinds of extras, they typically contain more information than you actually need or care about unless you're a complete fan-boy. The only one I found interesting, as someone who liked the film but isn't a fanatic, was the segment on the physical effects transforming Wikus into a prawn.

Stuff that didn't work so well: the MovieIQ feature, that's meant to use your internet connection to give interesting little factoids throughout the film, wasn't working because the server was down. Also, why oh why oh why do movie distributors try to cross sell with up front ads? Why do I have to fast forward through a Michael Jackson ad to get to my film?!

DISTRICT 9 is released on DVD/BluRay on December 28th.

DISTRICT 9 - scary monsters!

Neill Blomkamp's directorial debut is one half chilling dystopian sci-fi flick and one-half derivative summer action movie. Seemingly that has resulted in the golden combination of critical acclaim and the proverbial phat cash. To my mind, it's an entertaining, intelligent flick that stops just short of greatness in its final thirty minutes.

The premise is brilliant. When aliens arrive, they don't invade America but hover over Jo'burg, sick and malnourished. Eventually humans cut their way into the spaceship and offer the aliens refugee status, keeping them holed up in a ghetto called District 9. The aliens are denigrated as "Prawns", scammed by Nigerians, harrassed by mercenaries and oppressed by a fascist government. Think South Africa during the apartheid regime, or the refugees at Sangatte. We see all this through documentary footage of a particularly small-minded pen-pusher called Wikus Van De Merwe. Wikus is the kind of officious bastard who gets off on enforcing the law to the nth degree. Even when he's contaminated by alien bio-fuel and starts mutating, and in sheer desperation hides out in an alien underground workshop, he still talks about statute violations.

I love the fake-documentary footage that intersperses the film - from vox-pops to CCTV. I love the brilliant re-casting of the refugee experience as an alien sci-fi flick. I love Sharlto Copley's performance as Wikus. And I really love the fact that his development, from Prawn-hating tyrant to sympathetic mutant-on-the-run, is slow and credible. You don't just have a change of heart because you are oozing alien puss! I got a lot less interested in this flick when it turned into a derivative buddy movie full of hammy dialogue and technically brilliant but uninvolving explosions. It's a shame Neill Blomkamp couldn't have held his nerve, and turned in a dystopian horror as consistently gripping as CHILDREN OF MEN. But for all that, I can't deny that I'm excited at the prospect of DISTRICT 10!

DISTRICT 9 was released earlier in August in the US, Australia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, Canada, Estonia, Indonesia and Denmark. It opens next weekend in the Philippines, Finland, Latvia, Mexico, South Africa and Sweden. It opens on September 4th in the UK, Bulgaria, and Venezuela. It opens later in September in France, Switzerland, Spain, Iceland, Argentina, Portugal and Belgium. It opens in October in Italy, Romania, Turkey, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil and Colombia.