9 **1/2

Picture from: zap2it.com

9 takes place in a world where humans have been killed off by the very machines of their making. This storyline has been recycled time and again, from the robot in Metropolis (1927) and Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to the machine-controlled apocalyptic earths in The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999). But none of those movies are animated, and none have nine ragdolls leading the resistance.

The film begins with #9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) awakening in a house, only to realize the world around him is in shambles. He finds a little plate, zips it up inside him, and wanders off. He soon meets up with #2 (Martin Landau), a craftier, older design, who marvels at the little plate, knowing what it is and what it does. Or not. Truth be told, I still don’t know what this little thing does. The film’s plot is almost an aside, seemingly moving sideways more than forward. We find pieces of the puzzle, but they never really add up to the whole.

The dialogue is too simple, never properly utilizing the voice talents of Wood, Jennifer Connelly (#7), Crispin Glover (#6), or Christopher Plummer (#1). It might as well be a silent film, because the star of the movie is the animation. Shane Acker, the director’s whose short film on which the feature is based was nominated for an Academy Award, is in complete control as a visual artist. Each character looks and moves differently. In the best sequence of the film, the dolls find a record of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” As the music plays, there is such a sense of wonderment amidst such chaos. #3 and #4 dance atop the vinyl as it spins. It is such a perfect combination of picture and sound.

As the story unfolds, there are sequences of journeys and rescues, of internal struggle, flashbacks, and fierce robotic dogs. Not surprisingly, it feels like a string of short films that don’t quite fit together. The ending of 9 is as confounding as the rest of the film. At a brisk 80 minutes, we’re convinced we must have seen something, but we’re just not sure what.

All together, 9 is unnecessary as a feature film, and it is difficult to recommend as such. Unlike with Pixar, the leader in computer animated movies, Acker’s film does not contain relationships in which we feel invested. There is a good film in the material somewhere, and perhaps it remains in the original short, but I look forward to seeing Acker’s visual ability resurface in future projects. With an improved plot, he will no doubt make a much better, more entertaining, and more indelible mark on animated storytelling.

Jennifer’s Body ***

About twelve seconds into Jennifer’s Body we realize that Diablo Cody’s writing style was not solely intended for Juno, a screenplay for which she won an Oscar. Given your tastes, this may be good or bad news. This time around we find Megan Fox playing Jennifer, a gorgeous, popular cheerleader, and all around goddess of small-town Minnesota’s Devil’s Kettle High School. Her best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) is less gorgeous, less popular, and not a cheerleader, but we learn they have been BFF’s since the sandbox, and that kind of friendship lasts forever. Well, maybe not forever.

When Jennifer and Needy go to see Low Shoulder, a rock band from “the city,” at the local club, the night ends with the club’s destruction and Jennifer in the back of the band’s super-cool van. Soon after, Jennifer starts killing boys and feeding off their flesh. Needy more than suspects Jennifer for the murders, but she also suspects people will think she’s crazy for believing such unbelievable explanations, a suspicion confirmed when she finally tells her boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons).

Low Shoulder becomes successful with a tribute song to those lost in the fire at the club in Devil’s Kettle, which really ticks off Needy because she distrusts the band and its creepy lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody). What happened to Jennifer in the back of that van anyway? We soon find out, and it was nothing much more than we expected. However, is Jennifer’s admission to Needy that she is “not even a backdoor virgin” let alone a virgin proper, or her claim to the band that she’s “never done sex” the truth? The distinction is one of the more important plot points in a movie that survives on its own quick wits and blood.

As Spring Formal approaches, so too does the film’s conclusion. It comes full circle and goes a bit further. The film’s end is not so much an “aha!” moment than a “well, yeah…” moment, but it works nonetheless. Pay attention as the credits begin to roll, as it is here we find fulfillment with the ending.

All together, Jennifer’s Body is well made and original. It is also entertaining and very funny. Megan Fox shows that she can do a tad more than react to explosions, and Amanda Seyfried shows why she is still a better actress than her co-star. To say the least, Diablo’s Cody latest effort is anything but ordinary for teen horror films. But will she continue to stick to her witty yet unrealistic teenage-speak for future projects? While Juno had some well-developed characters over the age of 16, Jennifer’s Body is almost exclusively populated with high school kids. These words would sound too ridiculous coming from the mouths of anybody else. While she has a distinct style, if Cody insists on writing pop-culture infused banter, she may limit her character variety to, well, Juno.

Inglourious Basterds ****

Picture from: screenrant.com

Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino in top form. The film is a hyper-real exploration of historical actors and consequences in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. In the opening sequence we meet Col. Hans “The Jew Hunter” Landa (Christoph Waltz in an Oscar-worthy performance), an SS officer charged to round up all the Jews hiding in France. “The reason the Führer brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today…,” Landa explains to a French dairy farmer as he seeks to gain information about the whereabouts of a Jewish family, “is because I’m aware of what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.” The sequence is a deliberate exercise in brewing tension and then boiling it over, finally erupting in a climax more affecting than the finale of most films.

The film is populated by a number of archetypes. Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a company of Jewish-American soldiers called the Basterds. These are the soldier-heroes. They kill and scalp most every Nazi they come by, and they do it in dramatic fashion. Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) is the dame—a Jew who passes as gentile. She runs a cinema in Paris, and her fate is intertwined with Col. Landa’s (the film’s primary villain) more than once. Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) is a famed German soldier turned actor who endlessly flirts with Shosanna, a relationship she takes advantage of to seal the fate of more than one German.

All of these characters live in the moment. Though often described as a World War II movie, the film is far from a typical “war” movie. There is no boot camp or marching. There are no battles or dogfights. It is about people who live, breathe, kill, and most of all, talk to each other. The film is deliberately paced with long stretches of dialogue briefly interrupted by short bouts of violence. It works because we care what the characters say to each other. Pitt is in movie-star mode as Raine and Waltz is evil incarnate as Landa. But it is Mélanie Laurent who delivers a star-making role as Shosanna. Her character has the biggest arc and is the most important to the plot, and Laurent is a revelation. She can give an entire performance with her eyes.

All of the characters’ fates converge in the final chapter in Shosanna’s cinema. This last sequence is a grand set piece, naturally evolving into the film’s logical conclusion. Though it has been widely written about, I will not reveal the ending, as it is as apt and satisfying as you might expect. The film is raw yet subtle, utilizing five acts to develop the characters and then unite them in a climax befit a twenty-first century Shakespearean tragicomedy. It could be a novel, an opera, or a stage play if it weren’t so cinematic. Tarantino’s craft and storytelling ability bring together the best of all these art forms, combining structure, dialogue, blocking, editing, and music into a masterstroke of filmmaking. It will knock you on your ass and make you ask for more. The last words spoken in the film are “This may just be my masterpiece” before the frame crashes to the title card “Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino.” Apt, indeed. Inglourious Basterds is one of the year’s best films.

Sorority Row *

Picture from: yourmoviestuff.com

The first shots of Sorority Row pan through a crowded party of half-naked, drunken coeds in the midst of their initiation into the Theta Pi sorority. It is one of those parties populated by such impossibly good-looking people we strain to find the address somewhere—anywhere. I’ve never seen a party like this in real life. I can safely assume they don’t exist.

We follow a handful of sisters from the sorority into a bedroom where they begin to watch a video feed of a prank that is sure to go wrong. As Megan (Audrina Patridge) begins to foam at the mouth after her boyfriend Garrett (Matt O’Leary) slips her a Roofy, Megan’s sorority sisters, led by Queen Bee Jessica (Leah Pipes) feign concern and rush to her side. Megan’s dead, or so Garrett thinks, so when the girls decide to dump the body in a secluded body of water, Garrett stabs Megan in the chest. Why? So the air will escape from her lungs and she will sink to the bottom. Why did the sisters play this prank in the first place? Garrett cheated on Megan, of course. So they decide to really dump her body and forget the bloody fiasco. All of them except Cassidy (Briana Evigan) jump on board, whom the others threaten to pin the murder on if she calls the cops.

From there, the film turns into a third-rate teen slasher/horror mash of implausible plot details, boring sequences of text messages and showers, and a less than satisfying conclusion. After graduation, those involved in dumping Megan’s body down the well begin to be killed off by a tire-iron wielding killer looking for vengeance. Peripheral characters beware: if you even heard about what really happened to Megan, you’re dead. In one sequence, sorority sister Chugs (Margo Harshman) pays a visit to her psychiatrist looking to score some prescription meds. The killer decides to take out the psychiatrist, who happens to be a sexual deviant. Clever. In another sequence, well, let’s just say you probably shouldn’t use the senior shower if you’re not a senior.

So who’s the killer? Some of the girls think it’s an insane Garrett. Others believe that Megan somehow came back to life, climbed out of a fifty foot well, and learned the intricate art of the tire iron. Or is it Megan’s creepy sister that turns up in the second act? When we find out who the killer really is, we don’t accept his/her explanation, and we don’t care to.

Sorority Row is typical fare for the modern teen slasher film. It is a poorly executed knock-off meant to recapture the heyday of the mid-nineties revival of the genre led by the much better Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Unlike those films, the characters in Sorority Row are directly responsible for the original killing, making the audience more apt to cheer for their deaths than their rescue. Perhaps that’s the point, but we don’t care that they die. We don’t care who kills them. We just don’t. If you miss this one, you won’t be missing much.