..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

..Images from 9 ..9 Trailer ..Wilmington on DVD ..MCN Weekend

9 and
Whiteout and
No Impact Man

9 (Three Stars)
U. S.; Shane Acker

The future, darkly. The world has become a twilight mass of wreck, ruin, devastation and weird buildings, rotting under dour skies, and populated by doll-like little robots with button eyes, and with their nemesis, a huge monstrous metal killing machine. They're all remnants of a Terminator-style war between men and machines, in which the little robots, spawn of a humanistic scientist (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer), preserve all that is left of the human race, its sensibilities and ideals. Meanwhile, the killing machine pursues the humanoids through streets and wasteland -- and the robots, urged on by plucky No. 9 (Elijah Wood), seem doomed to fall, one by one, to the claws of the monster.

Incredible animated visuals adorn this dystopian fantasy-fable, expanded by director-story writer Shane Acker from his Oscar-nominated short, and produced by a combine that includes Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (of the Night Watch movies). The short was, more simply, a wordless chase duel between 9 and the monster. The movies adds the other eight robots and gives them personalities and conflicts: including domineering, gloomy leader No. 1 (Christopher Plummer), steadfast No. 5 (John C. Reilly), old scientist No. 2 (Martin Landau), obsessive artist No. 6 (Crispin Glover), outspoken fem-doll No. 7 (Jennifer Connelly) and of course, adventurous, reckless No. 9 -- who wreaks far more havoc among the other survivors than he intends.

9 has visuals to match, or even at times surpass, the marvelously blighted dystopian landscapes of Wall-E. But it isn't as good a story, and it doesn't have as lovable a hero -- perhaps because gung ho little 9 really does overreach and bring on some destruction to his mates. Acker has the kind of graphic cartoon genius Burton had (in his shorts), and it's clear why they're kindred spirits. Something wondrous may come of their partnership, if not always from our eco-damaged, machine-ruled planet.
 

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Whiteout (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Dominic Sena

I like some of Dominic Sena's frenzied action movies -- especially Kalifornia, Swordfish and (no kidding) his 2000 Gone in Sixty Seconds remake -- and this Antarctica-set thriller based on Greg Rucka's graphic novel has its moments. Most of them are supplied by Sena's and co-editors Stuart Baird's and Martin Hunter's skill at headlong terror-action sequences, here set mostly on a windswept Antarctic station and snowscape, and including a hell-in-the-skies flashback plane gunfight and crash that sets the stage. (Someone is murdering members of the Antarctic team to get their hands on the cargo of that Soviet wreck.)

But there's also some pleasure to be derived from Kate Beckinsale's saucy opening striptease and pert heroics as the station's past-tormented U. S. Marshall, and the not very mysterious guessing game about whether and which of her station-mates is the guilty partner of a mad Aussie killer (Alex O'Loughlin) -- whether Gabriel Macht as a bedroom-eyed fellow cop, Tom Skerritt (one of the wacky medicos Altman's M*A*S*H) as a kindly doc, or Columbus Short as an intrepid driver. Kudos to Sena and cinematographer Chris Soos for the virtuoso tracking shot intro to Beckinsale, but the story is often obvious and sometimes a hindrance. A bigger mystery: How did they get the whole movie to seem so cold?

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No Impact Man (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein, 2009

Manhattan couple Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin, middle class writers who live in the Fifth Avenue area, decide to follow a year-long Beavan program of making no impact -- or as little as possible -- on the environment, by abandoning paper products, electricity, TV, store-bought wrapped food, cars, and other seeming 20th and 21st century necessities, all as material for Beavan's next ecology-minded book. It seemed a little quixotic and self-deceiving to me (won't Beavan's book be printed on paper?), and to Conlin at first herself. (She wants a second child and is angry that Beavan, demanding so much/little of her and his family, won't cooperate on her program as well. And she's right.)

But, after a while, the stripped-down lifestyle reality show becomes fascinating, as well as providing scads of tips for ecologically sound living. I wasn't totally swayed by this, but, tips and all, it might eventually become a DVD classic.

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Read Michael Wilmington on DVDs


- Michael Wilmington
September 11, 2009

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