The Ninth Gate was a waste of my Thursday evening

[Phoenix Dark]

Late last night I was bored and noticed this movie was about to come on. When my brother saw what I was about to watch he warned me

"DON'T WATCH THAT. You will be pissed in two hours, trust me. It's a waste of time"

He has horrible taste so I ignored him. But god damn, I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED

Ok, the movie starts off awesome. From the first scene I was hooked. The music was creepy, yet familiar (reminded me of the Hellraiser score actually). After the suicide intro scene there's a pretty nice Rear Window homage shot, which I also thought was cool. In fact, there's a lot to like about the Ninth Gate. Once the film gets to the point - ie Johnny Depp going on Indiana Jones adventures to find satanic BOOKZ - it really gets exciting. But there were many flaws, most of which I ignored due to the anticipation of a big payoff.

-The acting is pretty weak. While I like Johnny Depp, he's a shitty actor when he isn't playing some type of extravagant character. The actors surrounding him certainly weren't any good either
-VERY anti-climatic for a film about the god damn devil. There's a particularly horrible scene in which Depp walks into his bookstore and notices his friend is dead. Yet his reaction is so even keel that the entire thing is just not believable. Not only does the camera reveal the body as if it's just anything , Depp's entire reaction is just poor. YOUR PARTNER IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN AND THE KILLER COULD STILL BE IN THE STORE. Act accordingly
-Why does Depp not realize his female traveling partner can fucking fly down stairs? It's obvious that she's a witch or something, but Depp is like "oh, whatever". This is NEVER explained, discussed, etc

But I forgave all that, thinking that something big was going to happen eventually. But nothing does. Depp is sent on a a mission to find out whether his client is in possession of an authentic copy of a book said to be able to summon Lucifer. This quest takes him through Europe, and while much of this is interesting very little is resolved.

-Why does Depp's client pay Depp millions to investigate these books when he's literally behind him the enter time? Why not do it himself? What was the fucking point.

I won't go into huge details for fear of spoilers, but the ending is one of the absolute worse I've ever seen in a film. There's no point, no payoff, no nothing. I wasn't expecting Satan to show up in a suit, but jeez. There is no point in investing your time in this. I would assume the FEW supporters this abortion has would argue that films don't have to show you everything, but I would retort that in this case, I want to see something dammit. For two hours there's ton of exposition about satanic tales, a witch shows up...yet you never really see anything too extraordinary. Rosemary's Baby pulled this off much better, and is still rather unsettling. The Ninth Gate tries to pull off the same fell but fails miserably. But I will say: there is a good movie in here somewhere, but sadly Polanski couldn't find it.

SO many plot holes, no proper ending, shitty acting, laughable green screen sequences...what is there to like about this shit?

Score:
/10
(5 cripples out of 10)

This is worse than any Will Smith movie

[Gay Boy]

Since when did anyone like this piece of shit?

[bud]

pd, your avatar... 

[Smooth Groove]

The scoring makes no sense.  5 synbioses is better than 10 synbioses, no?

[Phoenix Dark]

Score:
(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)/10
(5 cripples out of 10)

So 2.5 on a normal scale?

I wouldn't make sense to make a normal scale using Synbios

[TVC15]

You should read the book.  It is fuck all awesome.  And a quick read.  And after reading the book, I guarantee you will say, "God damn, this would make a fucking awesome movie."  And then you will think of the movie, and say, ""

[Phoenix Dark]

I'll definitely check out the book. I've always been interested in books about Satan

[TVC15]

I'll definitely check out the book. I've always been interested in books about Satan

http://www.amazon.com/Club-Dumas-Arturo-Perez-Reverte/dp/015603283X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197075026&sr=8-1

The book is like, insanely really good for a quick read.  It's a tragedy that 1) it will be at least a decade before someone can try it again in movie form, and 2) that it was Roman Polanski that fucked it up.  The Polanski of Rosemary's Baby seems made for this.

It's kind of like the midpoint between Umberto Eco and Dan Brown.

[TVC15]

Note:  The book is called The Club Dumas.  The Ninth Gate takes out the meta-textual game with Dumas that Reverte was playing which in turns tones down the idea books as a type of reality that was going on with the characters.  I'm not completely convinced that the book could be made into a movie, but it certainly could be made better than that.

It's been a while since I read it, but a better movie could definitely be made than the Ninth Gate.  A lot of the authorial name-dropping would have to be dropped, but I think most of the references to other works could stay in place (though many audiences would miss them).  The changes Polanski made were really dumb.  Doesn't like, Dumas have nothing to do with the movie?  Why the fuck would you do that?  He's in the title of the book!

[Phoenix Dark]

Ah, another book on my Christmas break reading list

[TVC15]

If you get into the Umberto Eco lite genre, you should maybe check out this, too.  I thought it was also pretty fun though the last quarter piles on the schmaltz.  It's a good book to read at the same time as The Club Dumas.

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Wind-Carlos-Ruiz-Zafon/dp/0753820250/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197075370&sr=8-1

Note that you are probably too dumb to read actual Umberto Eco, so don't even try.

[Gay Boy]

Ah, another book on my Christmas break reading list

you'll spend the entire break online

[Phoenix Dark]

Ruiz Zafón's novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault's Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels. As he grows up, Daniel's fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a "porcelain gaze," Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend's sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Officially, Carax's dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax's childhood friend. As Daniel's quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax's begin to emerge. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is "God's dandruff"; servants obey orders with "the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects"). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel.

That sounds awesome.

[TVC15]

It was his first novel, so it's a bit rough around the edges, and he pretty much blows the ending, but up until then it's a really fun read.  It was a nice surprise even if it wasn't perfect because you don't see people writing books like that a whole lot.

[TVC15]

That smacks of drawn out Borges so I will have to try it out. 

Since the ending is the most dissatisfying part, you might be left with a kind of crappy impression just after finishing it, but once you get over that, it's definitely worth reading.

Also, reading the wikipedia article makes me want to read it again, because it appears I totally missed that political allegory angle, and it explains the happy ending.