Nine Lives (2005)

This is basically nine short films with minor interconnections between a central theme and characters. It is told in 9 different 12 minute [approx.] stories that focus on a single woman each and the issues she is dealing with in her life.

Personally, I am a big fan of short films and watch about 50-100 a year but do not blog about them. The Oscars feature 15 nominations a year across documentary, animated, and live action categories [5 each] and I try to find and watch all of them, the documentary are almost impossible to find and the animated can usually be found on youtube pretty easily.

There is not a high demand for short films because plots cannot be developed and people are not content with fragments and if the story is good they want more. The Oscars feature shorts usually by up and coming directors and animators which eventually turn their stories in to feature length films, Cashback [short] and Cashback [feature length] is a good live action example and 9 (2005) and 9 (2009) is a good animated example.

When I watch a collection of fragments in a feature length film I expect them to be tied together in some way at the end, or at least to have a final story that closes the central theme. This film didn't have that. There was a very good performance by Robin Wright Penn (Jenny from Forrest Gump), but the performances by Sissy Spacek and Dakota Fanning were short and undeveloped. Amanda Seyfried is a very pretty girl, but 8 minutes of her walking back and forth across her house is not interesting to me.

A film that I overlooked 4 years ago and I didn't miss anything.

Vote: 5/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420015/

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