The South African director's debut feature is at once a powerful allegory for Apartheid, a character-driven drama and a rip-roaring, action-packed science-fiction epic. He pulls off this trifecta of awesome without resorting to heavy exposition or falling into cliché. Throughout the movie, there are no clear-cut heroes, although it does offer more than a few real villains. The characters display realistic depth and motivation, and the aliens look and act believably weird. The dialogue is well-written and rings true. All that, and there's a gun that makes people explode — what else can you ask for from a science-fiction movie? It's an instant classic that needs to be seen by every fan of the genre.
See it tonight only at 8 p.m. in Muenzinger Auditorium, on the CU-Boulder campus. Tickets are $6, $5 for UCB students. For more information, visit www.internationalfilmseries.com or call 303-492-1531.
Wed., Feb. 10, 8 p.m., 2010
