THE NINES
Plot in a Nutshell:
Movie-industry mindbender containing three interlocking stories, and three different characters played by Ryan Reynolds
Thoughts:
I think this movie ends with Ryan Reynolds realizing that he’s not the drug-addicted star of a CSI-style cop show, or an ethically torn TV writer, or a big-wheel videogame designer—but God. I know: that sounds like the worst possible climax for a movie imaginable—if Ryan Reynolds is the Supreme Being, then the universe just became even more meaningless than I thought it was—but The Nines isn’t a bad little movie. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that even though the ultimate payoff was a little puzzling, the mystery of what the hell was going on was tantalizing enough to keep me intrigued for the 90 minutes leading up to it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I was intrigued for the 85 minutes leading up to it—the opening sequence, with Reynolds bouncing off the walls during a hallucinatory, drug-crazed freakout, is pretty dire.
Bonus perplexment points for casting Melissa McCarthy (Lauren Graham’s pal Sookie on Gilmore Girls) in a significant supporting role as herself. Which must surely qualify as one of the least iconic “playing yourself” casting stunts in Hollywood history.
RATING: 3/5
ROCKET SCIENCE
Plot in a Nutshell:
Stuttering teen joins his high school debate team.
Thoughts:
Reviews were generally lukewarm for this comedy from Jeffrey Blitz, best known for making the fantastic spelling-bee documentary Spellbound, but I found myself warming to its unassuming but genuinely odd comic sensibility (so much more preferable to Juno’s labourious sitcom wisecracks) and its quiet refusal to hit the plot points that its premise seems unavoidably aimed at. Romance doesn’t blossom between Hal, the film’s stuttering hero, and Ginny, the motormouthed girl who convinces him to take up debating; Hal doesn’t get to triumph at the big climactic debating tournament; in fact, he’s pretty much as tongue-tied at the end of the film as he is at the beginning.
But at the same time, I can see why this film didn’t catch on. The script surprises you by not giving you what you expect—but instead of giving you something else, it kind of settles for giving you nothing. And there’s a Rushmore vibe to the film, thanks to Eef Barzelay’s whimsical score and the retro-nerd high school setting, except Wes Anderson fans will probably wish Blitz’s overly passive main character had more of Max Fischer’s crazy-dreamer energy. (Then again, the scene where Hal gets drunk and tries to throw a cello through Ginny’s second-floor bedroom window is pure Fischer.) A painless sit, although perhaps not quite distinctive enough for a full-throttle recommendation.
RATING: 3.5/5
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Plot in a Nutshell:
John Travolta’s notorious 2000 Scientological sci-fi stinkeroo.
Thoughts:
I caught this one at Metro Cinema here in Edmonton, with a live Mystery Science Theatre 3000-style commentary provided by local actors Dave Clarke and Jeff Page. Wow, is this a terrible movie, although there’s something oddly endearing about the amateurishness of the script, which resembles that handwritten “dream screenplay” that every 15-year-old sci-fi fan has stored somewhere in his desk drawer, full of hilariously retrograde sexual politics, nonsensical plot tangents (like the minutes of screentime devoted to the alien villains’ quest to figure out their human slaves’ favourite food), and half-baked comic-book dialogue.
For instance, I love the way the head villain (a nine-foot-tall slave-driver from the planet Psychlo, played by John Travolta) keeps calling humans “rat-brains”—which the screenwriters obviously felt was such a killer insult that they felt no need to come up with another one. I love the decision to give the Psychlos six fingers on each hand—a pointless “alien” detail that must have required an extra hour or two in the makeup chair every morning that only resulted in making every scene in which the Psychlos have to hold something look even more awkwardly staged than it did already. I love director Roger Christian’s decision to shoot every scene at a crooked angle—he might have been going for The Third Man, but instead he got something more akin to the scenes from the old Batman TV show set in the villains’ hideout. I love the fact that Forest Whitaker starred in this movie the year after he made Ghost Dog. I love that Marie-Josée Croze, from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is in the cast. And I love that this remains the most expensive movie ever shot in Canada. And yet I don’t love the movie. Weird how that happens, huh?
(By the way, Nathan Rabin did a hilarious takedown of this film as part of his wonderful My Year of Flops feature over at The Onion AV Club Blog. Like the 103 other entries in the series, it’s well worth reading!)
RATING: 1/5
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