$9.99 (2008) Reviews

• Third terrific Animated film out of the Middle East recently

  gortx2009-06-22

  The U.S. is dominant at the world box office for animated films, with Pixar at the top of the top of that particular food chain. And, Japan paces the planet for sheer volume of animated movies. So, who woulda thunk that not one, not two, but THREE of the more interesting animated features of the past couple of years would come out of the Middle East?? First, the Iranian filmmaker working in France, Marjane Satrapi made the superlative PERSEPOLIS -- and, with this past week's events, it's worth revisiting for it shows some of the seeds of rebellion that has lead to the protest marches. Then, came last year's Foreign Language film nominee, WALTZ WITH BASHIR out of Israel. Now, there's $9.99, made by another Israeli, this time working out of Australia - Tatia Rosenthal. $9.99 got a brief, ill-fated Oscar qualifying run in December in NYC and L.A.. It is now back in those two cities before, hopefully, opening wider across the country. *(see Oscar rant below) $9.99 is a well done claymation feature which weaves some short stories by writer Etgar Keret into an entertaining composite story centering around an "angel" and how he interacts with the inhabitants of unnamed small city. Don't expect a strict narrative and some of its best moments are just that - moments in time. It has a bit of the hallucinatory effect of Richard Linklater's animated features - SCANNER DARKLY and, especially, WAKING LIFE. Really hard to describe because the plotting is so loose that to give away many details both ruins the effect, and don't do the film justice. Best to let its brief 78 minutes just wash over you. The Claymation (augmented with CGI) is interestingly done, with an oddly effective sculptured look to the characters. Australians including Geoffrey Rush as the Angel and Anthony LaPaglia head up a solid voice cast. And, this must be the year of animated male member. First, there was the big blue meanie in WATCHMAN, and now, a clay one here. Yes, this is an R-rated film - also, for some language, clay-sex and drug use. * Oscar Rant. As noted, $9.99 played for a week in NYC and L.A. in order to qualify for the Animation Oscar category. So, not only didn't $9.99 not get a nomination, neither did WALTZ WITH BASHIR. But, BOLT did!?? The members of the Animation branch should be utterly embarrassed. What?!! Did these two films split the Israeli animation vote? Of course, animators in Hollywood further humiliated themselves by voting for the lite-weight KUNG FU PANDA over WALL-E at their Annie awards (in fact, a near sweep of their many categories).

• Unique & Brilliant. In turns depressing and uplifting.

  howgoldenboi2010-04-08

  I was so surprised to see so many negative reviews for this movie because I thought it was absolutely brilliant! Some people found the animation ugly whereas the movement seemed very smooth to me and the realistic expression and emotion they were able to portray with clay faces astounded me! The claymation style was too realistic for me at first, not cartoon-y enough, which gave the movie a very creepy disturbing feel. There are a lot of reds and purples used in the faces that can make the characters seem sickly, but you come to realise that this is a stylistic choice that makes the faces more varied and more like pieces of art than just moving toys. Art is supposed to disturb the comfortable anyhow and this movie does it very well. I have also heard the movie be critiqued for its jumpy, disconnected plot (it is based on a collection of short stories) whereas I felt that the thematic connections were strong enough that this movie very much felt like a unified whole. The characters are connected by the apartment complex they share and by the kinds of lives they lead and the kinds of problems they face in the plot. I loved the dialogue in this movie, one of those great works where subtle, very real moments and shifts in relationships are defined by the idiosyncratic way a line is worded in a conversation between characters. I was wrapped entirely in every conversation and each line seemed to carry so much meaning (in a light-hearted kind of way). The stores range from touching, sweet and hopeful to disturbing and depressing send-ups of life in a post-modern age. You really can take from this what you want- but not because the filmmakers have made ideas vague and unfleshed, but because they have taken so many ideas and fleshed them out in so many different and unexpected ways that you have a whole smorgasboard of meaning to pick, choose, riff on, dissect, abstract and so on. I don't want to hype it too much because I think part of my love for this movie was due to similarities I have with some characters and how connected this made me feel but please don't dismiss this movie, because it is definitely something very special!

• The meaning of life...

  vic-2322010-02-25

  One character in this beautifully crafted film buys a book entitled "The Meaning of Life." While we never discover exactly what that book contains, "$9.99" peruses questions about life's meaning with poignancy and affection. It's sad, silly, very human characters are people we know, and real enough so that we might occasionally forget we are watching animation. This is not a film for the young — there is no "action," no "romance," and little to make a viewer laugh out loud. Rather, we are offered a wryly comic look at human nature, best suited for those who have lived enough of life so as to be able to identify with the film's pathetically flawed characters, and look on them with affection rather than impatience or contempt. Human beings, the filmmakers suggest, are rarely able to communicate with other human beings, even to express love to those they love most. They are even less likely to fulfill each other's hopes and expectations. It is a pessimistic outlook, to be sure, and rather depressing — but, in the end, we are left with the message that love not only is possible, it is the only thing that gives life any meaning at all. Love — crazy, misguided, or bizarre as it may be — is all that matters.

• Very artistic and underrated film

  Rectangular_businessman2010-07-05

  I really liked this adult-aimed Australian animated film. The humor and the mood was somewhat dark and cynical, but I still enjoyed a lot seeing this movie, mostly because of the animation, which is quite detailed and well made. Unlike other stop- motion animated films, the characters aren't cartoonish, but are portrayed in a realistic way, something that contrast with the surreal and strange situations. The movie keeps a very interesting tone from beginning to end and all the characters are unique and interesting. Geoffrey Rush made a great voice performance as the "angel" and the rest of the cast made a wonderful work as well. This movie deserves more appreciation and recognition. I highly recommend it.

• a strange, episodic movie that contains some very weird moments

  Quinoa19842010-06-14

  $9.99 came and went from theaters, but it sticks out very nicely on On Demand, which is where I ultimately saw the little 70-minute claymation movie (I could say stop-motion animated, which it is, but it is very much in the clay tradition of practically being able to see the fingerprints on the characters' bodies and faces). It's about... I suppose how to live a life, I suppose, and that's emphasized by the book that keeps popping up periodically in the film- which you can buy for $9.99 (in the movie, not in real life, I think anyway)- that tells what the Meaning of Life is... that is, it gives a lot of other offers for books on how to deal with this or that in life. It almost looks like a coupon book, which is a shame since the character who is most in love with it, a nice kid, seems very much engrossed by it. But the title of Tatia Rosenthal's film is more like rounding off reality, perhaps. It's not a full $10, but the characters do try to make that price in their lives. To put it another way, no one character in this film is quite happy, but they keep trying, and maybe life will have some meaning when they can attain some happiness - or not, as case might be. Rosenthal's film, based on short stories Etgar Keret, focus on a group of people who have some, um, quirks to them, or are just painfully normal. The film begins with a middle-aged businessman turning down a homeless man a dollar for a coffee, and the homeless guy pulls out a gun and shoots himself. He later returns as an Angel and hangs out with an old guy on his porch, smoking cigarettes and wondering what Heaven is like. The businessman's sons: one is the Meaning of Life book-reader, and the other is a repo man who falls hard for a sexy (as sexy as claymation can be) model, and proceeds to shave his whole body with hair - and then takes a cue from the organ-less men who removed their body parts until they were heads and blobs. All for love, I guess. Other stories are a little more ordinary, more or less. More: a little boy is told by his father to put away fifty cents in his piggy bank so he can save up to buy a toy, but he finds that he grows attached to the piggy bank, who he names, and finds the piggy's smile very comforting ("I put money in, he smiles, I don't put money in... he smiles!"). Less: a guy whose girl really wants to settle down and marry and have kids and all of that, but finds that he would rather spend time in his room, listening to records with his three little "friends", little men ala Gulliver's Travels, and getting wasted on beer and pot. So the stories are mostly by themselves, but intertwine by certain events (such as the Angel doing a test "fly" off of the patio and with everyone else looking out the window), or by thematic context. The stories have a lot of humor to them, with one-liners that zing ("I found that there's not one meaning to life, there's six!"), and the look of the film feels similar but is original in its own right of character design and approach (and, for once, we get a rated-R claymation movie, including full frontal nudity!), but it also goes for deep moments and resonance, and Rosenthal strikes some good ground here. She doesn't try and over-do the messages, but lets them speak for themselves through the stories. It's genuinely odd, but it also gives heart-felt scenes and passages, such as the little boy with the piggy bank (the end of his story with the bank is quite touching), and it values the power of human responsibility with fantasy in equal measure. If it were a little longer it might really be something great, but as it stands it's a curious little find.