When was the last time any film became an experience for you? Not just a film that made you think or whose narrative and story exercised your mind. I mean a film that despite some of its flaws became such an experience that you became swept up with the rest of the audience in immersing yourself within the film. The biggest and most hyped film of 2009 and, most likely, this first decade of the new millenium, was such a film for me. A film over 15 and more years in the making for mega-director James Cameron more than lives up to the imposed upon hype (fair or not this film couldn't escape the hype) which hounded it right from the very first new bit leaked about its production.

James Cameron's Avatar is not the greatest film ever made despite what the studio heads financing it may declare. Nor does it change filmmaking the way technicolor film did during the late 50's and early 60's. What he has accomplished with this film is to finally give filmmakers a blueprint on how to make the intimacy between an audience and a film get much closer than in the past. Stories and ideas which in the past were said to be unfilmmable because the technology is just not there to make it happen is finally arriving, if not already here.

This film was and is an experience that should be seen whether one buys into the story or not. It is a story that is not very original and for some may conjure up a certain Oscar-winning Costner-directed film or a certain animated feature with Gully in the title. I won't say that it doesn't matter that it's not original, but I will say that the story works in the film. Cliched and hackneyed dialogue and all they work within the film Cameron was making. I will never mistake Cameron's writing skills when it comes to dialogue to be on the level of Kaufman or Mamet, but he does know how to tell a simple story and make the audience follow it and, if they're willing, immerse themselves in it. It helps that he has an innate sense for keeping the story moving forward to prop up what may be lacking in the tale.

With that particular flaw out of the way I must say that I haven't felt like this about a film (not even the best one I've seen this year) since the first time I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and, prior to that, Spielberg's first Jurassic Park. Only a few films can truly sweep me into what I was watching and just hold on and enjoy the ride. It didn't matter that what I was watching wasn't the second coming of Rashomon or this generation's Citizen Kane. What I watched I fully bought into. The new world of Pandora as imagined by Cameron and brought to life by the magicians at WETA Digital and ILM. There was a sense of dedication in what I was witnessing. The detail, clarity and realness of someone's imagination come to life made me hopeful that some of the boundaries people said would never be crossed creatively will finally have people stepping over them.

While the film is also being shown on 2D for theaters who haven't upgraded some rooms with 3D-capable gear I will say that Avatar must and need to be seen in 3D with IMAX 3D being the ideal format. It is the way Cameron has utilized the new "emotion capture" cameras he helped develop and create just to finally achieve that CGI-photoreal flaw which makes films like Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol creepy in a certain way when seen. The so-called "Uncanny Valley" which exist in past films where CGI-characters replace flesh and blood actors doesn't exist in this film. Using the groundbreaking "mo-cap" technique developed by WETA Digital for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (the trilogy which finally convinced Cameron that it was time to make Avatar and do it they way he envisioned it). The computer-generated Na'Vi have taken the crown from WETA's first CGI creation (Gollum) and are now the most realistic CGI characters ever put on screen. Cameron shows with Avatar that there's no limit on how much CGI should be used in a film. It's how they're implemented and pulled off that counts. Lucas, Bay and other proponents of CGI who have failed in its creative use down the years have much to learn from what Cameron has achieved with this film.

While it took several minutes to adjust to the 3D-effect in the film the moment my eyes finally adjusted to what it was watching everything clicked for me and the thought I was watching a film almost left my mind. The combination of CGI and real-life scenes didn't just blur but disappeared altogether. I'm more than willing to nitpick a film's heavy use of CGI and even some of the very best and most entertaining CGI-heavy films have certain scenes which can shock an audience out of the moment. I didn't feel that in this film and it was that total immersion in the work done by Cameron and his digital magicians which helped me overcome the story's familiarity and, as some would call it, ordinary-ness.

Even with the kind of material the actors had to work with the overall performances by everyone involved ranged from good to excellent. While I will admit that characters who were definitely written to be villains were done so one-dimensionally the way the performers played to be done these characters did a fine enough job that I bought into them. Yes, the corporate weasel and Burke-reborn played by Giovanni Ribisi did look very cartoonish in his execution of his character's motivations. Again Cameron is not known and will never be known for very deep and well-rounded characters. The same one-dimensionality in characterization still holds with the one character who stood out the most. Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch was scenery-chewing at its best. It has been quite the year for this journeyman actor. First he stands out in Mann's Public Enemies and now literally steals the film from Sam Worthington's "Hero on a Journey". While I doubt his performance won't win him much accolades this awards season and will probably be overlooked it still stands as one of the most riveting and grab-you-by-the-collar performance of the year. He joins an elite group of characters audiences love to hate, but still can't forget or take their eyes off of.

For those expecting the usual breakdown and deconstruction of this film will probably think I've joined the Jim Cameron train and drank the Kool-Aid (the purple stuff even), but I can't seem to wrap my ahead around why I enjoy and love this film despite the aforementioned familiarity and weakness in the story, the sometimes cliched dialogue and one-dimensional take on characters. Is Avatar just a technical and visual marvel that delivers on what Cameron has promised? Yes, it is and more so. Does the CGI and bombastic climax get in the way of the storytelling? No, I believe it actually helps it along and props it on legs as fragile and weak as Jake Sully's own human ones.

In the end, I have to conclude that my love for this film despite all its flaws comes down to the fact that watching Avatar was an experience for me and one that only happens so very rarely with film nowadays. Yes, Cameron didn't make a perfect film nor did he craft a film that is better than sliced bread. But what he did make was a filmgoing experience that decades from now would be talked about in the same way people talk about how they felt when they first saw Star Wars and believed in Jedis and space battles. Or how people felt when they saw Donner's first Superman and believed that a man could indeed fly. Cameron and his Avatar made me believe that there is a Pandora and that it is a place I hope to visit, but barring that at least experience it through Cameron's eyes as he sees it. I am definitely ready for what he has in store next and what other filmmakers can create with what he has shown them to be possible. 9.5/10

7. The Searchers (1956) - directed by John Ford

Landing at lucky number 7 is John Ford's epic Western, The Searchers. This near-biblical tale of the Old West many consider being John Ford's greatest film and I am in agreement. It has his signature landscape shot which many directors since have studied and tried to emulate. whether it was Peter Jackson for his Lord of the Rings Trilogy right up to Akira Kurosawa and his Samurai epics. The wide vistas has become an iconic visual sty!e when a filmmaker tries to make a Western or, at the very least, a film with Western-themes.

John Ford's use of racism to describe his lead character and do so without any sort of glamourizing the role was quite controversial and a gamble during the 1950's when such themes were rarely looked at and examined in a very mainstream film. This rough and brutal look at the real Old West would presage later films in the genre that would deconstruct the Old West myth that the era was a simpler and more innocent time in the history of America. Films such as The Wild Bunch, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven owe their lineage to this greatest of Ford's body of work.

Ford's opening and closing shots for this film would be studied in film studies c!ass for decades and still taught to this very day. The first shot beginning the story as it opens the audience to the world outside the safety of the homestead. The rugged and dusty world outside hinting at a world not so innocent and simple but dangerous and complex. The final shot bookending the film with the very same doorway closing on the lead character standing outside and isolated from the civilization that is the homestead. There has never been many opening and ending shots put on film to match the power of the pair which bookends The Searcher.

Zombies have either oversaturated pop-culture and media or there's just not been many good entertainment examples with zombies in it. Most zombies films usually end up taking the direct-to-video route or, even worse, the direct-to-cable path. The very good films about zombies are very limited in numbers. For every Shaun of the Dead we get truly awful examples like Zombie Wars, Automaton Transfusion and the Day of the Dead remake. I blame this flood of bad zombie films on what makes the zombie such an interesting monster for filmmakers to use: they're a blank slate. The zombie as envisioned by Romero are quite young in comparison to other monsters of film. They do not have the culturual and mythical history of vampires and werewolves.

Zombie films are easy to make thus we get every amateur filmmaker thinking they're the next Romero, pick up a digital camera and attempt to make the next zombie c!assic. What we get instead are dregs which give the genre a bad name. It is a breath of fresh air that Ruben Fleischer (using a screenplay penned by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) has made a zombie film which deserves to be seen in a theater and not on video or cable. Zombieland is a fun and hilarious romp which succeeds in delivering what it's preceding hype had promised and ends up being a very good film despite first-time jitters from a first-time filmmaker.

Zombieland makes no bones about what it's about right from the get-go. This is not a film where the audience watches the world fight for its existence against the growing undead. No, this film drops the audience to a world that's beyond gone to hell and one that now belongs to the zombies which explains the title. We're quickly introduced to the rules which now governs this new world. With narration from the film's first lead (played by Jesse Eisenberg) we learn the so-called "rules" of how to survive zombieland. There's a funny and inventive use of on-screen reminders of these rules throughout the film which looks similar to the captions Youtube uploaders add to their videos. The film quickly introduces Columbus' (the film's narrator) soon-to-be partner-in-survival. Where Columbus is quite obsessive-compulsive and more than just a touch cowardly Tallahassee (in a hilarious turn by Woody Harrelson) is the reckless, A-type personality and more than the opposite of Columbus. These two unlikely pair soon meet up with a pair of sisters who also happens to be veteran grifters who, on more than one occassion, give our hapless duo trouble in their journey through a devastated landscape.

The film has been called a zombie comedy and will be compared to the successful British zombie-comedy, Shaun of the Dead. While some are not wrong to compare Fleischer's film to Wright's the comparison really ends at both being zombie-comedies. While Wright's film was a zombie film with comedic aspects mixed in it was first and foremost a horror film. Zombieland is the opposite and the way it starts, unfolds and finishes it's really a comedy road trip like the National Lampoon Vacation films but this time with zombies instead of in-bred relatives, clueless motorists and tourist-traps. The film is quite funny froom beginning to end with the funniest and most hilarious being a surprise cameo of a well-known comedic actor playing himself right around the beginning of the second-half. This sequence got the most laughs and cleverly played up this actor's particular quirks. Most of the comedy and gags in the film comes courtesy of the aforementioned rules and the interaction between the characters of Columbus, Tallahassee and the two con sisters, Wichita and Little Rock (they use the city of their origins for names throughout the film).

While the film's story is quite basic what Fleischer and his small cast were able to do with them they did well. There really wasn't a false note in any of the actors' performances. Eisenberg and Harrelson played off each other well right from the time the two meet. Emma Stone as the punk-rock older sister Wichita to the younger Little Rock played by wunderkind child actor Abigail Breslin (girl has a future beyond her child role past). The road-trip of a story even has its own little quirks from Tallahassee's irreverent quest for the final stock of Twinkies to the sisters' goal of reaching the West Coast and an amusement park called Pacific Playland rumored to be free of the zombie menace.

Zombieland is not without its flaws. Some of the editing in the climacting reel of the film was to uneven at times. There were instances when the film was close to being bogged down but fortunately it never came to that end. The violence and gore in the film wasn't as high as one would think for a film about zombies that have literally devoured the world. One could almost sense that the filmmakers were hedging their bet when it came to the grue and violence. It seemed as if they were being overly cautious about trying to get an R-rating instead of an NC-17. The film barely makes it past the PG-13 territory. While these flaws could be attributed to jitters and a somewhat unsure first-time director in the overall execution of the film all involved did very well in sticking to the plan.

Even the look of the film makes it seem more big-budgeted than it really was (rumored to be between 9-10 million). Most filmmakers with years to decades of experience make a mess of trying to shot a film fully inn HD using HD-cameras, but Fleischer and his cinematographer Michael Bonvillain acquit themselves in their use of Sony's Gensis HD camera. The film looks crisp and clear, but without the glaring rough edges HD sometimes gives a film. The use of the Genesis camera makes possible the well-done intro sequence done in slo-mo to the tune of Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls".

Zombieland is a good start to what could be a very promising career for one Ruben Fleischer. There's skill in his work on this film despite some nitpicks that could be seen as flaws. The film in the end was very funny and fun to watch from start to end. While to story was very simplified (this probably helped in minimizing the pitfalls Fleischer had to avoid in his first major film production) with characters that was fleshed out just enough for the audience to connect with the final product delivered on the hypse which preceded this film. Zombie film fans would get a huge laugh and kick out of this very quick under-90 minute production while even those who are not into zombies much would still find themselves laughing and being entertained. Zombieland may not be scary in comparison to some of the great zombie films of past but it more than makes up for that with energy, life and a genius of a cameo scene that would be the talk of the town. 9/10

The Crazies was one of George A. Romero's non-zombie films during the 70's when he was still years away from filming his epic Dawn of the Dead. While the film had things similar to what would become his zombie films it was an interesting, but very flawed film about governmental conspiracies, nature of violence and many more heady philosophical issues Romero was wont to insert in his films.

If there was a film in Romero's body of work that screamed for a remake it was The Crazies. While the original 1973 film was rife with interesting ideas the overall execution of the film was average at best and, for some, very terrible. Now the film and its ideas get a second chance and it looks like from the trailer that this remake will be one of the instances when it surpasses the original on all levels.

The Crazies (remake) trailer

The trailer definitely has more than peaked my interest in this remake and has made it one of my must-see for 2010. I just dug the use of the song Mad World to finish off the trailer. Really, gives emphasis on the title of the film and one of the plot ideas worked in the story.

8: Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) - directed by F.W. Murnau

Coming at the 8th spot is the lone horror film to make my top ten of all-time list, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror). F.W. Murnau's 1922 c!assic retelling of the Dracula-tale (names were changed by Murnau for the film with Dracula becoming Orlock due to inability to secure the rights to the Stoker novel) is a prime example of German Expressionism in cinema which dominated the German film industry from the end of the first World War to it's height of prominence throughout most of the 1920's.

Murnau's film was one of the first to truly make great use of shadows as a way to convey feelings of dread and of the terrible unknown which may or may not lurk within them. Despite filming the whole entirety of the film in broad daylight, Murnau was still able to convey the horror of the Count through those ver shadows he manufactured with what could only be seen as advanced techniques in his time. While the sets weren't as oblique and surreal as the non-Euclidean angles of Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Murnau's use of lighting gave each setting in Nosferatu an otherwordly sense which further heightened the feel of discomfort and terror Murnau wanted the audience to feel.

Nosferatu also marks the beginning of horror as a genuine genre in the early history of the cinema where action, romance and comedies were usually king. Murnau's film would influence Hollywood during the golden age of horror under Universal then once again through another resurgence of gothic horror during the 50's and 60's under the Hammer Films Studio. While it's influence waned for American cinema during the late 60's and throughout most of the 70's it would return once again as a new genertion of directors such as Burton and Del Toro would have their own films influenced by Murnau's vampire film.

Not my favorite horror film of all-time, but one I will acknowledge as the wellspring from which all horror in film owes it's origins from. There would not be a horror genre if not for F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror).

9a. Bronyenosyets Potyomkin aka The Battleship Potemkin (1925) - directed by Sergein Eisenstein

9b. Triumph of the Will (1934) - directed by Leni Reifenstahl

Sharing the 9th spot on my top ten of all-time list are Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 epic film, The Battleship Potemkin and Leni Reifenstahl's 1934 propaganda film, Triumph of the Will.

One of the silent era's greatest films and one which stands the test of time. Eisentstein's tale of a mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin was written by Eisenstein himself as his contribution to the propaganda film industry that was growing within the nascent Soviet Film industry of the 1920's. The film was to celebrate the revolutionary ideals of the 1917 Bolshevik Uprising.

Eisenstein revolutionized the use of editing not just as a tool to create a coherent and active visual sequence on the screen, but he also used it as a way to elicit an emotional response (some would say manipulate) from the viewer. The most famous use of this editing technique being the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence which have been emulated, copied and outright scene-for-scene imitated by filmmakers decades after. The most famous being Brian De Palma's reconstruction of the scene for the penultimate scene in The Untouchables.

The Battleship Potemkin also marked the beginning of the golden era of the propaganda film which would include the war bond and news reels of WWII for the American theater-going audience to the most infamous propaganda film of the era, Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will.

Reifenstahl's film marks the high-point of film as propaganda. Whether one agrees with Reifenstahl's politics and belief in the Aryan ideals one cannot dismiss her film as a major work of art. From sweeping camera shots of the Nuremberg rally and the lockstep march ofthe SS and SA cadres with their eagle standards brings to mind what it must've looked like when the Roman Emperors entered Rome in triumph.

Where Eisenstein introduced the montage-sty!e of editing with his film Reifenstahl used it very little, but instead went for a more proto-version of what would become the long take-technique that would end up influencing such directing luminaries as John Ford, David Lean and Stanley Kubrick.

It is quite ironic that two filmmakers with diamterically opposed political and idealistic leanings would both create pieces of cinema that would influence the artform for decades to come. An artform that has become synonymous with the decadent West both sides would end up in conflict with.

10: The Wild Bunch (1969) - directed by Sam Peckinpah

I consider Peckinpah's ultraviolent deconstruction of the Western (especially the outlaw films which tended to glorify the very criminals they're based on) as one of the best films of all-time and makes my top ten at number 10. This film was Peckinpah at his best and most controversial. While exploitation cinema such as horror have already been coming out with graphic violence and very mature themes the mainstream genres of the time (westerns, comedies and romantic dramas) were still quite puritanical in how it portrayed sex and violence on-screen. Even the best of that era reined in their filmmakers from showing and giving away too much.

Peckinpah would have none of that and his force of personality bulldozed any attempt to water down his vision of the lawlessness and utter chaos that was the Old West at the turn of the century. He didn't see them as glamorous and heroic. What he saw were deeply flawed men who lived day-to-day as if it was their last and in some cases this happened to be the truth. These were men he thought were a construct of the time and whose very nature as mavericks in a world starting to conform to uniformity were becoming an anachronism. I'd even say that anyone who wanted to know what sort of a man Sam Peckinpah was should watch and study The Wild Bunch. This film could almost be an unofficial autobiography of Peckinpah not just as a filmmaker but as a man.

The ultraviolence and his treatment of language and sex in this film would influence the next generation of filmmakers such as Scorsese, Coppola, Lumet (though a contemporary of his), Bertolucci and then the generation after that one in Tarantino, Woo, Haneke, Fincher and Park.

Even before Eastwood's own revisionist tale in how we perceived the Old West in Unforgiven this film by Peckinpah beat him by several decades and when put up against each other still remains the more powerful and poignant of the two.

It is a rare feat that an unknown filmmaker is first introduced to the public to take control of the reins to major motion picture with legions of fans. Fans who have both high expectations and also equally high trepidation about hwo their favorite intellectual property will be handled and adapted to the big-screen. The year was 2007 and Peter Jackson (who had been given producing duties by Microsoft, Fox and Universal Pictures) announced to the world that he had selected a young South African filmmaker by the name of Neill Blomkamp to direct the film adaptation of Microsoft's hugely popular sci-fi action shooter, Halo. The reaction to this news was bewilderment, grumblings and major headscratching from fans and studio executives alike.

Who was Neill Blomkamp and what has he done of note to be given the reins to one of the largest and most popular video game franchises?

Peter Jackson definitely saw something in this young South African. While fans of the Halo game wanted Jackson himself to direct the film he decided to let this unknown take the job. To give a glimpse of what he was capable of and to prove to both fans and executives that he was the right man for the job, Blomkamp filmed three short films depicting live-action scenes of Halo to be released as part of the Halo 3 media ad-campaign blitz for its 2007 release. All three short films were dynamic and had a grittiness to it which definitely showed the young man had talent, but in the end it wasn't enough to save the Halo film from being declared postponed then cancelled. Studio executives from both Fox and Universal (both had licensed the rights to release the Halo film for domestic and international release. They were also to help put up the $150million stated budget) wanted a higher percentage of gross profits from the film. Microsoft who was putting up a large share of the budget refused and studio politicking literally ended the film while pre-production by Blomkamp, Jackson and his WETA team were five months in.

What had become a major blow to the beginning of Blomkamp's filmmaking career might be the very thing which puts him on the map as one of the brightest and most inventive filmmakers of his generation. With $30million dollars of his own money, Peter Jackson gave Blomkamp a second chance to make another sci-fi actioner, but this time do so independently and away from the control and interference of major studios from Hollywood. The film Neill Blomkamp ended up making after the cancellation of his Halo might just turn out to be the best film of the summer of 2009 and one of the best of the year. The film is District 9.

Born and raised in South Africa, Blomkamp's experience growing up in the final throes of apartheid and the societal chaos which succeeded the end of minority white rule could be seen in the basic foundations of District 9's story (screenplay co-written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell). It is a story detailing an alternate historical event in world history when in the late 1980's a massive alien spacecraft suddenly appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. This momentous event in human history soon turns into a worldwide "humanitarian" undertaking people soon discovered that the aliens who inhabited this spacecraft (numbering over a million) were not the all-conquering or benevolent beings as shown by Hollywood, but malnourish, sickly and aimless beings who appeared to be bipedal, barely humanoid looking crustaceans. Derogatively called "prawns" by the inhabitants of Johannesburg, these aliens spend the next 20 years of their existence on Earth housed in a heavily-policed and walled shanty tow and slum area in the city named District 9.

It is in this District 9 where most of the action of the film takes place as a plan by the government and it's hired private corporation of Multi-National United to relocate these aliens to a more remote camp of District 10. A camp 200 kilometers away from the population center of the nation's capital to the relief and delight of the population. In charge of this relocation program is one Wikus van der Merwe. A middling middle-manager within MNU who may have gotten this particular job for no reason other than being the husband to the daughter of MNU's chief executive. Wikus van der Merwe appears in the early going of the film like a cross between Lumbergh of Office Space and Michael Scott of The Office. Wikus seems to relish and delight in his new-found authority leading MNU bureaucrats and their company private security teams in forcibly removing the aliens from their shanties. Wikus' racist attitude towards the aliens is quite evident as he uses the derogatory name for the aliens (prawns) every chance he gets. It is during the inspection of a secret lab in one of the shanties where the film deftly switches from the first third of the film as a scifi allegorical study of South Africa's (and most likely the world as a whole) racist apartheid past and into a Fugitive-like chase film which make's up the middle third.

To say that what Wikus finds in the alien makeshift laboratory makes a profound impact on him is quite an understatement. Blomkamp shows not just Jackson's influence as a director of horror, but also has quite a handle on the Cronenbergian aspects of the storyline. Blomkamp shows rather than tell through long-winded expositions what is happening to Wikus that suddenly made him the most wanted man in South Africa, if not the whole entirety of the planet. Wikus' starts the final third of the film literally transforming from the nebbish and weasly character from the beginning into something of a reluctant hero, albeit for his own self-interest.

It is the final 20-30 minutes of the film where those audiences still on the fence about District 9 will probably end up finally getting hooked with the rest of the audience. Blomkamp has shown in the first two third of the film that he knows how to handle social commentary in a scifi story without being too heavy-handed and preachy. He's also shown a knack for keeping a constant pace and adding to the tension which finally explodes in the last half hour of the film. It's the pay off that action-flick fans had been waiting for and they won't go away disappointed. Alien weaponry are finally put into play and we see just how effective they can be when used on humans. Bodies are literally blasted apart whether by lighting blasts or from high-powered rapid-fire guns.

Not lost from all the social and allegorical commentaries within the story and the rolelrcoaster ride of a finale is the fact that Neill Blomkamp has deft eye for creating a believable alternate reality for this film to inhabit. With the help of his cinematographer Trent Opaloch and a battery of Red One digital cameras, Blomkamp settles for a gritty and grainy look for the film. This gives the production a very documentary-like feel. They've also used to great effect the so-called "shaky-cam" technique to simulate a cinema verite look for the more chaotic scenes in the film. It is not a new way to film as films like Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield plus the Bourne Trilogy. What this film was able to do which those films failed to some extent was to allow the shaky-cam effect not to distract too much. This is shaky-cam as if being handled by a professional combat filmmaker taking in a battlezone as it happens. While the first half of the film relies mostly on patched together scenes from news reports, official MNU company videos and video interviews of select individuals, the second half moves away from this mockumentary-style and into a more traditional narrative technique. It is easy to nitpick this change in techniques after the fact but Blomkamp's chief editor in Julian Clarke makes it possible for a near-seamless transition from one film-style to the next without skipping a beat.

The peformances from a literal cast of unknowns (at least to Hollywood and those outside of South Africa) could easily have been the main weakpoint in District 9 but it turns out to not be the cast. Headed by first time lead actor, Sharlto Copley as Wikus, the film's cast does a very good job of lending an air of realism and credibility to a fantastical story. Their performanaces are mostly understated except for the role of MNU security-team leader Koobus Venter as played by David James. While James played the role in its early stages as the usual no-nonsense military veteran the character soon turns into a major villain to hound Wikus in his flight. While this transformation wouldn't be such a bad thing the overreaching and over-the-top performance by James turned Koobus into a caricature of a villain. One almost expected the man to cackle (at times he almost did) and bellow out the classic evil laugh. In the end, Copley's performance as Wikus was the highlight of the film's cast performance. In the beginning it is quite easy to detest this bookish and sycophantic functionary, but as we follow him throughout the film we see his transformation into something of a coward who must turn into a reluctant hero to serve his needs. Finally, we see him make a sacrifice which redeems him in the eyes of the audience.

It is not often that a film comes along which makes a major impact on a genre, especially from a filmmaker making his debut feature film. While not a huge blockbuster in terms of budget District 9 manages to outdo the usual tentpole event films from the major studios this summer. Budget constraints doesn't keep the film from becoming a sweeping epic not seen since another low-to-midbudget R-rated scifi actioner that went by the title of Robocop. Like that film from the late 80's, Blomkamp's film manages to find a balance between saying something about his home country's past racial and societal problems, but also give the scifi genre a frenetic, action-packed, kick-ass of an action film that doesn't turn out to be silly, contrived or stale. Not everyone will enjoy this film as the best ever or even as the best of recent years, but it is hard to argue or dismiss the fact that District 9 is film which refuses to be pigeonholed into a particular type of film. It's a message film and a scifi film. It's also a film of body horror and a study of the human condition both its darker and better natures.

District 9 is a film that lived up to the hype surrounding it and surpassed expectations. This film also makes a star out of first-time director Neill Blomkamp. He will certainly be flooded by offers from the very major studios who doubted him during his aborted attempt to turn a major pop culture franchise into a film. It also validates the notion that a summer blockbuster doesn't have to be dumbed down or stripped of its thrills to have both. Or that it has to have a budget in the hundreds of millions to make it look like one. A near-perfect film and one that should be the driving influence for the scifi genre for years to come. 9.5/10

Frank Darabont circles zombies

This has to be the best news for a summer full of great news about what will be on tap for TV this upcoming season and the future. Frank Darabont has just inked a deal with cable channel AMC to adapt and bring to the small-screen Robert Kirkman's epic zombie apocalypse comic book series published by Image Comics. There's always been talk that Kirkman was in talks with some power players in Hollywood to bring to TV his zombie series, but no one knew if it would be a series on network TV or cable.

Network TV would've given the series a much wider audience, but the mature and violent nature of the stories in The Walking Dead would've had to be diluted for the show to ever make the air. This is an ongoing story about surviving in a zombie post-apocalyptic world. The gore and violence would be something that couldn't be dumbed down or kept away from audiences' eyes. One other option was for one of the two premium cable channels (HBO or Showtime) to pick up the series and adapt it faithfully with violence, harsh language, sex and gore intact. The only stumbling block from one of these two cable giants from picking it up was their schedule line-up already quite packed of series still popular and bringing in the high ratings.

After little news from Kirkman about the status of his series either becoming a tv series or (fans dreaded) a film adaptation, now comes word from Variety that Frank Darabont seems to be the one who has either licensed or bought the tv rights to adapt The Walking Dead from Kirkman and now has inked a deal with cable channel AMC to bring it to cable. While it's not premium cable where anything goes, it is still AMC which has followed the template set down by FX channel about how to bring a mature-audiences series to cable and get away with enough to compete with the likes of HBO and Showtime.

Production hasn't begun as Darabont with producing partners Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert are still shopping around for a studio to work with. But with the current popularity of zombies in entertainment and with Kirkman's epic series considered one of the best and hottest non-superhero properties in the comic book industry I am very confident that the show will land with a studio and casting and filming will begin in earnest.

Now let the casting rumours begin!

There has been a complaint which has been getting louder and louder for the past several years from both horror and mainstream film fans. The complaint is that horror films of late have either been remakes or another sequel. While this complaint is not exclusive to the horror genre (non-horror genres have had the same problem) it is more prevalent and happens more often. Once in awhile a film will come out that tries to be different and put out an original story. Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra has done just that with his second foray into feature filmmaking with Orphan. While the film won't win many awards and become the critical darling the way last year's Let the Right One In did Collet-Serra's Orphan does bring a fresh new take on the evil child subgenre. Despite some of the flaws and script problems the film does entertain throughout most of its running time until it loses steam in the final 15 minutes.

Jaume Collet-Serra first got his start directing the 2005 remake of House of Wax. A film more famous (infamous in some people's eye) for being the first major film of socialite Paris Hilton. A film which deservedly got panned by critics, but which still did well enough in the box-office to put horror fans on notice that Collet-Serra might be a filmmaker to keep an eye on. Orphan marks his second full-lenght feature and using the screenplay by David Leslie Johnson, Collet-Serra tries a hand in the evil child subgenre which has more than it's share of classic titles like The Omen, The Bad Seed and The Good Son. While this subgenre of horror usually means some sort of demonic-possession or some sort of mental or genetic abnormality causing for their psychotic or sociopathic behavior in Orphan an interesting reason was given to the nature of it's titual character.

The film begins with a harrowing and quite disturbing scene of the Vera Farmiga's character pregnant and in labor, but also starting to miscarriage her child. The graphic nature of the scene quickly lays down the hammer that Orphan will not hold things back just because childen will be involved throughout most of it's running time. We then see Farmiga's Kate and her husband John (played by Peter Sarsgaard) at the local orphanage as they attempt to fix their family and ease Kate's emotional turmoil over the miscarriage by adopting a child. They meet Esther a 9-year-old Russian orphan girl who seem to be the perfect child at first glance. Esther is well-spoken and well-mannered at such a young age. Esther soon becomes part of John and Kate's young family which consists of a younger deaf daughter named Max and a son named Daniel. While Max accepts Esther as a new older sister Daniel senses something just off-putting about Esther and reacts much more coldly towards his new dopted sister.

The majority of Orphan's second and first half of the third and final reel shows Esther's true nature peek through the facade of Old World genteel and proper behavior. 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrmann does an excellent job portraying the sociopathic and manipulative Esther. It is difficult to believe that a child actor ofher age able to tackle such a dark role and actually pull it off without making the character too over-the-top or campy. In fact, no matter how one thinks of the performances of the rest of the film's cast (Farmiga does a good job in the Cassandra-role with Sarsgaard an average performance as the hapless and clueless husband) this film is totally Fuhrmann's and she sticks the landing.

While the film tries to make something original (and most of it is to a point) out of a tried-and-true model of the evil child storyline the script doesn't hold up through the lenght of the film. The story itself is quite interesting when one really steps back to look at it, but there's several leaps in logic the Kate character makes which will illicit more than a few confused reactions (running away from incoming help and into the dark, unknown being a major one). The dialogue itself is serviceable with none of it wince-inducing. There's just a sense that the film's reveal in the end of the film as to Esther's true nature was just handled in a very clumsy manner. The twist is very original but the execution of that reveal after the tense and very brutal 40-50 minutes before it comes off quite flat. Orphan definitely looked like a script which was in need of several more rewrites to reconcile the first 3/4's of the film with the final part. Yet, despite the ridiculous manner in which the final 10-15 minutes unfolds Collet-Serra manages to keep the film from dragging along through two hours. It actually plays much faster for a film with such a long running time.

In the end, Orphan marks a decidedly better effort from Jaume Collet-Serra, but one which still shows that he has some polishing to do to join the ranks of better horror directors of his generation. The film is enjoyable enough if given a chance. Most horror fans will enjoy the film and some may even embrace it because of the silly ending. Mainstream audiences looking for a change of pace from the strum und drang of the summer blockbuster season could do no worse than Orphan. It is not a perfect film and not even an above-average one, but it is a good horror film that tried to add something new to the genre, but hampered by a storyline that cannot sustain the tension it built-up and the brutality it showcased. In the hands of a much more seasoned filmmaker with a better hashed out screenplay Orphan could've become an instant classic. 6.5/10