Nine Lives: Critic Reviews

Although each character holds the spotlight only briefly, she arrives as if with a life already in progress, and it's easy to believe that she'll keep busy even after the credits roll.

An extraordinarily rich and satisfying suite of fleeting but intense moments in the lives of nine women.

The moments that Garcia has chosen to observe are unforgettable, the women -- played by an ensemble of actresses at the top of their respective games -- indelible.

Not all of Nine Lives clicks, but at its best it finds an inarticulate sisterly solace that makes you want to see what this director could do with one life per film.

The short-story glimpses aim for Carver-esque pang, though the script could have used some Lorrie Moore bite.

A fascinating series of vignettes.

The cast steps up, embracing the chance to exercise acting chops normally limited to live theater. Most do so resoundingly, but two stand out: Robin Wright Penn and Jason Isaacs.

The greatest short story writers, like William Trevor and Alice Munro, can awe us; their stories are short but not small. Here Rodrigo Garcia does the same thing.

A disturbingly frank look at people and relationships in contemporary Los Angeles and a thrilling dramatic showcase for a brilliant cast.

[Garcia] leaves you thinking deeply about these people. And leaves you wanting more.

The cumulative effect of the rigorously controlled and purposive camera style adds up in the end to a collective portrait of womankind that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Though the episodic structure results in a whole not quite equal to some of its parts, pic is an unusually tender, perceptive character study buoyed by stellar performances from a who's who of talented (and many underused) actresses.

The bad stories waste your time, and the good ones leave you unsatisfied.

Nine Lives is an elegant film of quick, tour-de-force acting turns, a simple actor's gesture that tells you more than four pages of dialogue, a movie that demands concentration but that rewards the viewer willing to pay attention.

What's the point? If I wanted to spend 12 minutes watching someone pushing a cart around a grocery store, I'd go to the local A&P, not sit in a movie theater.

The stories are sketches, often without resolution, and while individual segments succeed admirably, taken together the portraits are a fitful match.

A sophisticated, elegant-looking film shot in distinctive, wide-ranging L.A. locales, but its real terrain is the human heart, explored with compassion and respect.

Nine Lives, zero truth

Each woman has to turn herself inside out in continuous time. It has the demands of theatre and the intimacy of cinema.

Loss is the common thread that binds the women in these nine snapshots that involve us in their intricate lives. Some stories work beautifully, while others are dull and hardly capture our interest

Kathy Baker deserves and Oscar nomination for juggling so many different feelings during her slow, reluctant acquiescence to the drugs that may likely save her life.

In the end, all of the pieces in Nine Lives fit together perfectly. If one story doesn't quite resonate for you, the next one likely will in this small but beautiful film.

Nine Lives had me tense, engaged, sometimes disgusted, sometimes moved, and always interested. Garcia is an ingenious and eloquent storyteller.