filmland / By Charlie Myers

Puppets at the End

Plus: Whiteout is a gray celluloid mess and Sorority Row is really awful

(Sept. 17, 2009) Previews

Opening Friday, Sept. 18, is Steven Soderbergh’s latest film The Informant! Based on the 2000 nonfiction book by Kurt Eichenwald about whistle blower Mark Whitacre, the film stars Matt Damon in a comic take on the story. Rated R for language. 108 m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek and Minor.

Megan Fox is everywhere, and now she’s the evil high school cheerleader hottie in Jennifer’s Body, a darkly comic horror film written by Diablo Cody (Juno). When Jennifer suddenly becomes available to the panting high school guys, they might not like the price of admission. Amanda Seyfried costars as Jennifer’s best friend Needy. Rated R for sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use. 102m. At the Broadway and Mill Creek.

Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston star in the romantic drama Love Happens. Eckhart plays a widowed self-help author who can’t help himself and Aniston a Seattle florist who’s given up on dating. He comes to Seattle to lead a seminar, they meet, and … Rated PG-13 for some language, including sexual references. 109m. At the Broadway and Mill Creek.

Inspired by the cleverly titled children’s book of the same name, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a computer animated film about a scientist who solves world hunger by inventing a machine that converts water into food. Then the machine runs amok. Rated PG for brief mild language. 90m. At the Broadway (2D and 3D) and Mill Creek.

Reviews

9: I’ve always had a weakness for dystopia stories and post-apocalyptic fare. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which centers on a father and his son as they attempt to get to the Pacific Coast following some cataclysmic event, was one of the most powerful novels I have read in recent years. I’m hoping the upcoming Oct. 16 film release starring Viggo Mortensen as the father will capture the novel’s power. Likewise, I am eagerly anticipating the imminent release of Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to her dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood.

This is an indirect way of saying that I went to 9, cleverly released on 9/9/09, with some positive expectations, much unlike me. In the end, I have slightly mixed but mostly positive feelings about the film. Unfortunately, I have not seen Shane Acker’s animated short of the same title but I gather it followed, without dialog, the sentient rag doll 9 as he battles the Cat Beast who has destroyed 1 through 8 and captured their souls.

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