9 songs Reviews
Top Critic
As satisfying viewing experiences go, the film comes up mighty short in terms of story, interesting characters and technical prowess, not to mention a 65-minute running time.
Nice folks, fun time, thanks for the peek (I guess), and so what?
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Five decades after the rest of the world twigged to it, Michael Winterbottom has discovered a connection between sex and rock 'n' roll. Bully for him.
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| Original Score: 2/4
It is, at its (hard)core, a traditional sex movie with better music and naturalistic situations.
| Original Score: 2/4
A pointless and pretentious cocktail of sex, rock 'n' roll and glaciology.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Ultimately each move toward breaking a barrier or assaulting a taboo is undercut by a reliance on conformity and convention.
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| Original Score: 2/4
An expertly blended mix of live music and real sex.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
9 Songs is an experiment few serious filmmakers will want to replicate, and most of the people involved will want to forget as quickly as possible.
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| Original Score: 1/4
If you're a fan of the 'now' bands on the soundtrack or an art film buff (or a dirty old man), 9 Songs may appeal.
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| Original Score: B-
As an idea, the film is fascinating, but as an experience it grows tedious; the concerts lack closeups, the sex lacks context, and Antarctica could use a few penguins.
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| Original Score: 2/4
It looks like what most young adults go through in the spirit of trust and limitlessness.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Witnessing so much heavy breathing with little meaning, we feel like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate when he asks bored bedmate Ann Bancroft if they can have a conversation first.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The movie's like a mix tape that alternates the same two songs; it's ultimately too dull to be an outrage.
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| Original Score: 2/4
9 Songs succeeds as an experiment in one regard, ultimately proving that sex and drugs just aren't as cinematic as good old rock-and-roll.
This disappointing new film from director Michael Winterbottom suffers from a similar malaise: It's poetic and pretty, strives for profundity without attaining it, and finally ends up saying nothing.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Never did sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll seem more shopworn and routine.
It's stupefyingly dull, even with good music and at the short but resonant length of 69 minutes.
Neither lurid nor especially compelling.
Yet for all its ballyhooed candor about sexual matters, it's a surprisingly baffling and opaque film, too artistic to be standard pornography and too zealously focused on being graphic to the exclusion of all else to succeed as drama.
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| Original Score: 1.5/5
There's no greater point to this footage, no connection to the characters or the theme; just top bands playing great songs. It looks like a collection of music videos, just as the rest of the film looks like a connection of porn loops.
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| Original Score: 1/4
The fun and pleasure of sex are relatively easy to put on film. But subtler shades of feeling and doubt, which sometimes change almost from night to night in the early stages of a relationship, are harder to capture, and that's what Winterbottom gets.
Using solely explicit sex to tell a story is something new for a non-triple-X project, but it's not always a pretty sight.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
You leave the theater feeling as if you're a part of their sweaty, dizzying affair.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Michael Winterbottom's film is a lyrical, graphically explicit chronicle of an ordinary love affair between two attractive people.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
9 Songs is one of those vaguely forged ideas that never stops being vague.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The filmmaker has said he wants 9 Songs to be drama about real sex that's not erotic. As if an admission of erotic intent somehow cheapens the aesthetics. And so a viewer's question might reasonably be, Who are ya kidding?
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| Original Score: C
Love it or not, 9 Songs amounts to a common human rite fastidiously caught in amber, giving off no heat or joy but crystallized for the future.
A touching, often poetic, sometimes achingly real snapshot of a brief encounter related almost entirely through the bedroom.
