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Sired by Seabiscuit and Old Yeller, Dreamer is a journeyman pony with a lot of heart but not a lot of flash. Not showing us anything we haven’t seen before, it still runs a solid race and might even place or show on a good night. Okay, I think I’ve stretched that metaphor about as far as it will go without it snapping back and decapitating somebody.
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Nine Lives is the movie equivalent of an anthology of short stories, incorporating the tales of nine women whose lives have trapped them inside personally untenable situations. It’s also a stylistic experiment, because each story is filmed in a single, unbroken eleven to fifteen minute take. This unique approach turns each episode into a one act play. It also gives the stories an immediate, fly-on-the-wall quality that heightens the sense of reality onscreen.
The stories themselves lack any grand, life-changing arc that you expect from more conventional movies. These are moments out of nine lives (natch) captured voyeuristically. The script by writer/director Rodrigo García captures the natural rhythms of the way people talk (rather than the way movie characters talk). The characters are sharply etched portraits of largely unremarkable, but compelling people we might know, but in shoes we’re glad we’re not walking.
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Stephen Spielberg‘s career seems to have gone in three different directions lately. There are the serious, mature films that began with Schindler’s List and continued with Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and this year’s Munich. On the flipside are the lightweight comedies that always seem to star Tom Hanks, like Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. Somewhere in the middle are the edgier science-fiction films like A.I., Minority Report and now his take on H. G. Wells‘ The War of the Worlds.