Alive in Joburg (2005)

Who payed the critics

Sadly Over-hyped

Masterful Movie

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

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.

This is "Alive in Joburg", the third effort as a filmmaker for South African Neil Blomkamp. Obviously, these 7 minutes were the basis for his hugely successful "District 9", a movie that I absolutely loved. They packed the very basics of the feature film into this short film already. There is a huge spaceship flying over Johannesburg and aliens have come down and created a colony in the South African metropolis. They live at the lowest of possible conditions in terms of sanitary, nutrition and health. People are clearly against them.Sharlto Copley, who plays the main character in "District 9", also has a short appearance here as an interviewee. It's actually his first on-screen appearance ever. Blomkamp seems to have a tendency to remake his early works ("Tetra Vaal") as full feature films ("Chappie") and I applaud him what he turned "Alive in Joburg" into. However, I cannot say I was particularly well entertained by this short film from almost 10 years ago. Not recommended.

I hunted this short down after watching the trailer for District 9. And you have to hand it to Blonkampp for avoiding a plot-driven mess that this movie could have made. It's interesting to set the film in South Africa as well. The many perceptions throughout Alive in Joburg creates the questions needed to ask about these aliens that are genuinely terrifying in appearance. And the open-ended finale can be finally touched upon 4 years after Blonkampp began this. Does anyone think Blonkampp has the chops to handle Halo if District 9 works out? The short and the trailer would have you think so, but honestly, let's wait for August to continue that debate.

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