DVD review: District 9

The South African sci-fi satire was one of last year's huge surprise hits, a wildly inventive creature feature that also managed to comment on wider issues, a very hard trick to pull off (Starship Troopers was a rare example). Its uniqueness is greatly enhanced by being set largely in an abandoned part of Soweto, and this clash of aliens and locals has obvious echoes of apartheid, but writer-director Neill Blomkamp leaves you to make that connection in a film that's half documentary-style comedy and half full-out action movie. A sequel seems inevitable, but this will be hard to top.