|
www.filmcritic.com - : A well-cast compilation film suffocating on its own self-importance, Nine Lives aims to tie together nine vastly different stories, but ends up telling hardly any of them well. The conceit of writer/director Rodrigo Garcia is to take nine vignettes, each centered around a different woman (usually in desperate circumstances), and give us a brief glimpse into her life before cutting away to the next one, while stringing a few connecting threads between them all. To ensure that he’s not playing favorites, each piece is done in one single Steadicam shot and kept to only nine or ten minutes in length. A minor character from one vignette becomes a major player later on, or vice versa. As in literature, anthology works like this are a hit-and-miss affair, and in this case the misses far outnumber the ones that connect. more...
|
|
|
www.einsiders.com - : Every year there's always one movie that comes out of nowhere and flattens you with its greatness. In 2005, that movie is Rodrigo Garcia's ''Nine Lives.'' Told in nine separate fragments, ''Nine Lives'' centers on nine (there's that number again) women whose lives are in various states of disorder (some more grave than others). It's a rigorously emotional film to be certain, but not one that torturously drains the viewer. There's a straightforward quality to the film, which makes it feel honest and free of posturing. more...
|
|
|
www.filmthreat.com - : Prison isn’t just the L.A. County Jail where Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) mops the floor against harsh sunlight streaming through the windows. It’s the supermarket where a pregnant Diana (Robin Wright Penn) encounters a former lover (Jason Isaacs) and is internally tormented as to whether she should have stayed with him. It’s the house where distraught Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton) demands to her sister (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) the need to see her father alone. It’s the posh apartment building where Sonia (Holly Hunter) and her husband (Stephen Dillane) meet their friends (Jason Isaacs and Molly Parker), and uncomfortable truths emerge. The two rooms in the house where Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) talks to her parents (Sissy Spacek and Ian McShane) also is a kind of prison. It’s difficult enough for Lorna (Amy Brenneman) to attend the funeral of her ex-husband’s deceased wife, but even worse when a few people claim she shouldn’t even be there. And the places and characters go on, as only director Rodrigo Garcia could see them, in a very novel way. more...
|
|
Critic Reviews
