Is irony at work here or what? Two controversial films based on excellent short features are released in the same year and both have the number nine in their titles. And both should have remained critically acclaimed short films because neither has enough substance to be a full-length motion picture.
The irony continues. Both Shane Acker -- who does 9 -- and District 9's Neill Blomkamp are rising digital animation stars whose first solo efforts are iffy at best.
Who can resist sending 9 out in 09-09-09? Acker's 9 was released Sept. 9. District 9 has earned more than $100 million and is still packing them in at the box office.
9 is set in the future where machines are created to serve. Something goes incredibly wrong. Perverted by a Big Brother-like dictator, the machines rebel and go to war with humans and destroy us all. What's left of humanity is found in the souls of tiny gunny sack toy figures numbered one through nine. They, too, are hunted by the machines.
Number 9 is the last to wake up. He finds a special button identified by Number 2 as something important. A flying insectlike machine grabs Number 2 and the button and flies off to a giant factory. The others follow and there the toy-creatures begin to get clues as to what happened to humanity and to their own fate.
The much-bragged-about animation techniques are as mortal as the wiped out humans. It is nothing special and neither is Acker and Monster House co-writer Pamela Pettler's additional scripting.
9 is The Terminator on ritalin. It is loaded with adult themes but really aimed at kids. And -- more irony here -- though rated PG-13, it is the perfect flick for a 9-year-old boy.
Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. contends that large, profit-centered corporations produce almost all of the food in the nation and for most of the world. There are less than 10 of them. Profit means shortcuts, increased chemical use to preserve, hormones in animals and vegetables and fruits to make them grow faster and bigger. Those techniques reduce the food's nutritional value.
Director Robert Kenner says these companies have no scruples. Profit is what drives them. They don't care if they cause cancer or other diseases, if the fast food they produce makes us horribly obese or even if they kill us all. Profit is their only focus.
When I was a kid we only had one TV channel and that was if the TV worked. With limited selection I was raised on Walter Cronkite's brilliant You Are There and his outstanding 20th Century in the 1950s and 1960s. They gave me an almost unnatural love for documentaries. I find them irresistible.
Cronkite also trained me to ask questions. So I never see a documentary without wondering about the agenda of the writer/producer/director. That helps when you're hit with heavy propaganda from documentarians like Michael Moore.
Food, Inc. is heavy propaganda. Kenner and his producers do have an agenda. It is to scare the living hell out of you. And they succeed. Kenner and crew are concerned about your food.
Unlike Moore and others, and at a time when we are seeing an alarming number of recalls because the food we pick up at the grocery store is poisoned, Kenner and crew hammer home some important -- and once you see it -- indisputable facts.
Add this one to your viewing menu and chew slowly.
The Class
The Battelle Film Club's opening Fall Season flick is from France. The Class is based on former teacher, now writer and movie critic Francois Begaudeau's acclaimed book. Director Laurent Cantet and Begaudeau explore the complex relationships of teacher to students, students to faculty, faculty to faculty and faculty to parents. Most of the focus is on how Begaudeau's character Francois Marin reaches his kids and what he has to do to get them to stretch and grow as students and as human beings.
If you don't know the behind-the-scenes story, The Class appears to be a well-conceived and edited documentary about a year in a French, mixed-race, inner-city school. Though it is not a true story, and is not set in the U.S., it is somewhat biographical and is as close as most middle-aged adults will ever get to a modern classroom.