9 Movie Download

10 / 10

think if Don Bluth were forced to make a ‘post-apocalypse’ CGI movie… and it’s *better*
Shane Acker has a good career ahead of him. At the least, one can only hope so. His talents expressed here, his first feature adapted from his short film of the same title, are immense and sharp and clear and dark and staggering and other words I didn’t have time to look up for this review. He takes a scenario one could be familiar with- entities battling robotic elements in a future or just another time period, a desolate wasteland, a possibility of hope on the horizon- but it’s infused with the passion and archetypes of a fairy tale. And even with this there’s certain twists, or unexpected pleasures. You’ll see a lot of critics talk about the lack of a full story, of the beauty of the animation and look of the film outweighing any kind of story or clearly defined characters. You can take that to heart before seeing the film, but a lot of them may have missed Acker’s intention here.

These are some archetypes on screen, sure. And one may have seen them in films made by the likes of Don Bluth with the Secret of NIMH or, dare I compare, Henson/Ozs’ the Dark Crystal (here the latter’s object of purpose is reversed, sort of). But the characters in 9, the ones with personalities, are not complete. The idea in the film is that all of the characters, all numbered from 1 to 9 and called as such, are little robotic creations given life by parts of the soul of a scientist who gave himself up for his creations. Others he made, a ‘machine’ for it, was also imperfect – so much so that it turned against its creators and did what giant gorram robots do when created with human’s own defects. So the characters may appear to be things we very simply identify- hero guy, hero girl, slight comic-relief twins, and the grumpy and ornery older one (#1)- and as it goes on the characters simply are what they are… actually, 1 develops a little more, and in a subtle, captivating way.

But if you’re going to see an animated film this year for its distinctive style and design and (yes) cinematography and creations and colors out of the netherworld of a glorious imagination – and it’s not from John Lasseter’s Disney or Pixar – it’s 9. And damn the torpedoes is this movie beautifully wretched to look at! One can see why Tim Burton and Wanted’s Timur Bekmambetov latched on to Acker and helped him get the movie made as it is: it’s a world like Terminator Salvation, only if it had actual focus and a capacity to elicit a terror in its audience (young or old). The little robots themselves are cute in a rough way, and the robots – and specifically what they do to one of the critters when they capture one of them by sucking out their souls – move and react like inhuman things that do what they should and look and feel like the world really has ended. You simply can’t take your eyes off the movie, and it’s animated with such an eye for original detail.

At the same time it doesn’t aim directly at adults, albeit with a PG-13 rating. I can imagine, or at least would hope to, that a child watching this and being bewildered and confused and mortified and entranced, just as I was watching NIMH or Crystal, and that’s a good thing. PIXAR has its wonders, but to see this is to see the A-game upped another notch in the medium and its potential. There are times I didn’t even feel like I was watching just animation. Other times, I was taken away like any good fantasy or fable: in the one little moment of respite, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ plays on a record and there’s peace… until it’s broken. It’s rare a filmmaker can conjure something like that, but 9 has that in spades.Read More