District 9 is that rare thing amid the cheap bombast that passes for science-fiction in the movies today: an alien film with socio-political bite, reminiscent of those great Cold War-infested studies of paranoia (The Day the Earth Stood Still et al) that used extragalactic interlopers to make social observation.

District 9 ★★★★☆
Neill Blomkamp

(500) Days of Summer ★★★☆☆
Marc Webb

Big River Man ★★★☆☆
John Maringouin

Greek Pete ★★★★☆
Andrew Haigh

Tricks ★★★☆☆
Andrzej Jakimowski

Bustin’ Down the Door ★★★☆☆
Jeremy Gosch

The scenario here, laid before us with scabrous humour in a brilliant opening half-hour that mixes newsreel footage, CCTV, corporate video and the dull tropes of reality television, is all too convincing: the aliens have landed on an earth that is not quite ready for cosmic unity and are segregated into a pound on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

They are helplessly addicted to cat food, show a violent disposition and are resented among locals. Nigerian bandits have moved in to deal in arms. Trying to keep a lid on proceedings is Multi-National United, which sounds like a west London football team but turns out to be just another vicious paramilitary law-enforcing agency.

A resettlement programme is put in motion, under the leadership of a meek middle-manager with an Everyman veneer of casual prejudice. But the “prawns” – nothing warm and cuddly to bond with here – have been busy planning their escape, and he finds himself genetically compromised in the mayhem (think The Fly, but even yuckier).

Sharlto Copley in ‘District 9’

Director Neill Blomkamp expertly marshals the action, and although the climactic exchanges settle into familiar territory, he provokes genuine moral outrage – and allows plenty of scope for sequels – in the explosive final scenes.

(500) Days of Summer is an above average rom-com that dares to venture towards an appalling conclusion: perhaps boy loves girl a lot more than girl loves boy, and perhaps he really can’t persuade her into mutual and symmetrical infatuation, no matter how handsome and funny he is.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel just about make it work. And a clever format allows director Marc Webb to play narrative tricks without taxing his audience, while compensating for the inevitable lack of tension in the love story. Shame that a ghastly coda drives a truck through all the preceding deftness.

Daring to venture: ‘(500) Days of Summer’

Big River Man is a documentary portrait of Slovenian extreme swimmer Martin Strel, and it follows his record-breaking attempt to swim the length of the river Amazon.

Are we reaching saturation point for these poignant studies of excess? There is an easy-going barminess in the set-up here, as Strel’s son Borut strays into near-namesake Borat territory in the cranky narrative: “Many Slovenians eat horse burgers. It is like a chicken burger, the only difference is that it is made with horse meat.”

Borut accompanies his father’s swim on a paddle steamer (shades of Werner Herzog) and observes with surprising dispassion as Martin loses his bearings and his marbles with the onset of exhaustion. The direction gets hallucinogenic, and the film’s mighty protagonist cuts a sorry figure as he determines to complete his task.

However, the wider political point about saving the rainforest is clunkily addressed and there is a general air of contrivance as well as connivance on the part of the filmmakers. Best are the scenes of primitive quetitude that seem to take place outside the perimeters of the film altogether. PA

Other releases

Greek Pete proves what we had long suspected. Life imitates Mike Leigh films, at least in Britain. So do many aspiring filmmakers when trying to look with wit and forlorn truthfulness at the reality of Britain. Andrew Haigh’s tale of a year in the life of a London rent boy is a debut docu-drama, deadpan and winning. “Greek Pete” (Peter Pittaros) and his pals are enacted by real rent boys or, as they call themselves, “escorts”.

Peter Pittaros in ’Greek Pete’

In some candid scenes they prove their professional prowess, right there on camera, with clients or porn-video participants. (Keep Aunt Edna well away from the cinema.) What rivets the attention, though, is not the hardcore action but the sense of inaction, of a tragicomical, low-rent stasis bordering on crisis. Pete and his drug-dependent rent-boy lover Kai (played with a poignant bird-like frailty by Lewis Wallis) argue about their domestic togetherness: Kai wants more of it, Pete less. Pete rambles to the camera about his grandma’s disappointing reaction to his career choice: “I thought she’d be more supportive.” Sex has turned into breadwinning drudgery. Late on, barely believably (but anything is possible in this Lewis Carroll world), Pete is named international “Escort of the Year” at a glitzy Los Angeles ceremony.

Flashing his tank-topped muscles, oozing second-generation Mediterranean “charm”, smugly proud of his controlled drug abuse, Pete is a traffic accident masquerading as a human being. We sympathise with him, at times, if only because Pete so eloquently and resourcefully sympathises with himself.

Andrzej Jakimowski’s Tricks is a small Polish charmer that seems lost in the wake of time. It could have come from the Prague Spring cinema of Milos Forman, Ivan Passer or Jiri Menzel – a Closely Observed Orphans about a boy and older teenage sister looking for their vanished dad in a provincial town. The scratchy press-show print seemed another imprimatur of age, though blemishes cleared to reveal a pellucid directorial eye for the appeal of the everyday and non-professional performances (Damian Ul, Ewelina Walendziak) attesting to the charisma of the untrained.

Do we need another surfing documentary? Aren’t 100 enough? Short answer: we don’t. Long answer: we don’t and do. Bustin’ Down the Door is more footage of blond Anonises riding Neptune’s rollercoasters, in this case Australians and South Africans who converged on the famed north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, in the 1970s. Their older selves rattle on to the camera about the lure of the swell and the power of the “pipe”. But once or twice – making it all worthwhile – an interviewee touchingly chokes up at his own memories, and brims with sudden tears, like a Proust character who has bitten too deep into his Madeleine. NA