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The first images are spellbinding. In close-up, thick fingers make the final stitches in a roughly humanoid little rag doll, and binocular eyes are added. This creature comes to life, walks on tottering legs, and ventures fearfully into the devastation of a bombed-out cityscape.

This visionary world was first created as a short subject by Shane Acker , a student at UCLA, and was nominated for a 2006 Oscar. At the time I found it "an atmosphere of creeping, crashing, menace... elaborated as a game of hide and seek, beautifully animated and intriguingly unwholesome." So it is still, as the first figure, named "9," meets his similar predecessors #1 through #8, and they find themselves in battle against a Transformer-like red-eyed monster called the Beast.

One might question the purpose of devising a life form in a world otherwise without life, only to provide it with an enemy that wishes only to destroy it. The purpose, alas, is to create a pretext for a series of action scenes, an apocalyptic battle that is visually more interesting than, but as relentless as, similar all-action-all-the-time movies. This is a disappointment. Remembering the promise of his original short, I look forward to what Acker would do at feature length, especially with a producer like Tim Burton to watch his back.

The characters look similar, but easy enough to tell apart, not least because they have their numbers stitched on their backs. They also have different visual characteristics, and are voiced by distinctive actors, including Christopher Plummer as their fearful leader, #1, and Jennifer Connolly as the token female #7. The usefulness of gender in a species without genitalia is not discussed, not even wistfully.

Nine is the youngest, probably the smartest, and certainly the most daring, leading the others, against #1's wishes, to poke around the ruins. These look left over from a city from the past, not the future, and a 1940ish newsreel reports on a devastating global war triggered by a Hitleresque dictator. Was the Beast left behind to wipe out any survivors, and assure final victory even in the absence of victors?

Such questions, I submit, are intriguing. But the dialog is mostly simplified Action Speak, with barked warnings and instructions and strategy debates of the most rudimentary kind. Since this movie is clearly targeted not at kiddies but at teens and up, is it now Hollywood theory that eloquence and intelligence are no longer useful in action dialogue?

One of the benefits of the pre-CGI era was that although action scenes might be manifestly artificial, they had to be composed of details that were visually intelligible. Modern CGI artists, intoxicated by their godlike command of imagery, get carried away and add confusing complexity. If I were pressed to provide the cops with a detailed description of the Beast, the best I could do would be: "You'll know it when you see it. Also, it has a big glowing red eye."

Contrast that to the enormous construction in Miyazaki's " Howl's Moving Castle ." It is awesomely complex, but I have a large print of one of Miyazaki's still drawings from the film, and you can clearly see that it's all there .

"9" is nevertheless worth seeing. It might have been an opportunity for the sort of challenging speculation sci-fi is best at, however, and the best reason to see it is simply because of the creativity of its visuals. They're entrancing.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Rated PG-13 violence and scary images

Elijah Wood as No. 9 (voice)

John C. Reilly as No. 5 (voice)

Jennifer Connelly as No. 7 (voice)

Christopher Plummer as No. 1 (voice)

Crispin Glover as No. 6 (voice)

Martin Landau as No. 2 (voice)

Fred Tatasciore as No. 8, Radio Announcer (voice)

Alan Oppenheimer as Scientist (voice)

Tom Kane as Dictator (voice)

Helen Wilson as Newscaster (voice)

Directed by

Shane Acker

Screenplay by

Marci Levine
Pamela Pettler

From a story by

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Visually stunning but scary fantasy for older tweens and up.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Despite its often-bleak tone and some conflict amo

The character 9 is resourceful, selfless, and brav

Several scenes of frightening machines attacking a

Positive Messages

Despite its often-bleak tone and some conflict among the characters, the movie's overwhelming messages are about banding together to battle evil, not leaving anyone behind, redemption, and self sacrifice for the greater good. As in the Terminator movies, there's a clear caution about giving too much power to machines/technology. There's also a spiritual undertone to some parts of the movie, especially in regards to how the main characters came to be.

Positive Role Models

The character 9 is resourceful, selfless, and brave from the start. He inspires the rest of his kind to band together and fight against the machines. The 7 character, who is female, is a fierce, independent warrior. Leader 1 is initially resistant to change, curiosity, and risk, but he sees the error of his ways in the end.

Violence & Scariness

Several scenes of frightening machines attacking and, in several cases, killing the main character's friends. Although the battles are between ragdoll-like creatures and robots instead of humans and aren't gory, they can be quite intense and scary. There are also disturbing images of a machine being beheaded, characters having their life force sucked out of them, explosions, and other moments of intense, suspenseful peril. Dead human bodies are shown briefly, including a mother and child, and flashbacks and newsreel footage show an intense battle between people and rampaging machines. Weapons include spears and, in the flashback sequences, guns and chemical bombs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this dark, futuristic Tim Burton -produced fantasy may be animated, but it's not meant for younger kids. Violence and scary scenes are prevalent throughout the film, with the main characters frequently battling killer robotic machines -- which are merciless as they pursue (and, in several cases, kill) their ragdoll-like prey in frightening ways. The robots also make alarming noises and often pop up out of the blue. Dead human bodies are shown briefly, but there's no gore. On the up side, despite the movie's ominous tone and frequent peril and violence, there's no language, drinking, consumerism, or sexual content. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (34)
Kids say (138)

Based on 34 parent reviews

Great Philosophical Kids Movie

9 is my new lucky number, what's the story.

Based on writer-director Shane Acker's 2005 Oscar-nominated short, 9 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where all that's left of humanity is a band of ragdoll-like beings created by an unnamed elderly scientist. When the final ragdoll, 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood ), awakens, he sets off to explore his world. He stumbles upon another creature like him, 2 ( Martin Landau ), but they're quickly attacked by a mechanical beast, and 2 is taken. 9 joins up with the remaining ragdolls, who are split between those who want to confront the murderous machine to save 2 and those who want to hide from it. After 9 inadevertently powers up an even bigger machine, the group has no choice but to attempt to destroy the killer robot.

Is It Any Good?

Acker is a gifted filmmaker: The movie's visuals are breathtakingly crafted. Everything in a scene -- from the buttons and zippers on the ragdoll creatures' bodies to the stained-glass window in a deserted cathedral -- is amazingly detailed. The pacing is also just right. At only 79 minutes, the suspense is crisply edited, with a couple of moments earning audible gasps from the audience. Based on style alone, this is a brilliant, five-star film.

But story-wise, Acker falls a bit short. The plot is minimalist, and all of the characters -- aged and jaded leader 1 ( Christopher Plummer ), fiercely brave 7 ( Jennifer Connelly ), sweet but scared 5 ( John C. Reilly ), introverted artist 6 ( Crispin Glover ), and mute librarian twins 3 and 4 -- deserve more depth. We see 9 from his "birth," but the rest of the gang isn't nearly as strongly sewn together. Still, plot shortcomings aside, 9 is a must-see for its impressive, inventive animation.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's violence and scary scenes . Is it any less scary because humans aren't involved, or is it still intense?

What is the movie saying about technology? Is technology portrayed negatively in other films?

Who do you think the movie's intended audience is? Do you think young kids will want to see it?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 9, 2009
On DVD or streaming : December 29, 2009
Cast : Christopher Plummer , Elijah Wood , John C. Reilly
Director : Shane Acker
Studio : Focus Features
Genre : Fantasy
Run time : 79 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence and scary images.
Last updated : January 9, 2023

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Animation , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

September 9, 2009
Voices of Elijah Wood as 9; Christopher Plummer as 1; Jennifer Connelly as 7; John C. Reilly as 5; Martin Landau as 2

Home Release Date

December 29, 2009
Shane Acker

Distributor

Focus Features

Movie Review

In 9 , the meek inherit the earth.

What an inheritance.

The world is a lifeless, smoking pile of rubble, the land laid waste by war between machine and man. The sky is a haze of brown-gray soot, the streets are littered with stone and metal shards and skeletons—the detritus of a civilization snuffed out. Nothing around here weeps. Nothing breathes. Nothing lives.

There, in the corner of the carnage, small, sentient rag dolls lurk. The meekest of the meek, they’re called stitchpunks, and their cloth skin covers intricate machinery that allows them to talk and walk and run. And there’s something else inside them, too: thought, feeling, ingenuity, ambition. They click and whir and live. And die.

9, our titular hero, is the last of his kind—the creation of a repentant scientist who somehow stitched a soul inside him and set him spinning. But the process kills the scientist, so 9 crawls out into this hostile world alone, only by happenstance finding others much like him.

They are, it turns out, products (offspring?) of the same scientist—they’re numbered 1 through 8—and together, they face the earth’s current master: A sentient-but-soulless machine that creates other spiritless monsters and has a strange, all-encompassing hatred for stitchpunks. The spider-like machine captures these little rag dolls and, through the use of a cryptic, unexplained talisman, yanks out their essence—killing them. We don’t know why it hates them. We don’t know why it kills them. Perhaps it doesn’t know why, either. It simply does.

So opens our planet’s final showdown—a clash in which the last semblance of humanity, sewn inside ragtag avatars, faces the force that destroyed everything.

[ Note: The following sections contain spoilers. ]

Positive Elements

9 and his fellow stitchpunks are (pardon the pun) a tight-knit group. While some are more sympathetic than others (and one, for much of the film, is a downright jerk), all seem willing to sacrifice a great deal—sometimes their lives—for the good of their “family.” Several show moments of bravery and ingenuity, and all seem to genuinely care for others—even if that concern sometimes manifests itself in different ways.

Spiritual Elements

While neither God nor religion is overtly mentioned in 9 , spiritual themes are everywhere. First, there are the stitchpunks themselves: They’ve been imbued with souls—a contrast to the heartless machinery they fight. Director Shane Acker uses his stitchpunks to question the evolutionist notion that humanity is just a pile of organic nuts and bolts. There is, he argues, something special about the soul.

“There’s some spirituality in [our] creation, some indescribable thing that can’t be broken down into scientific terms,” Acker told scienceblogs.com . “Though we can start to describe [the] brain as a complex collection of nerves that creates thought, you can say that we’re complex amino acid collections, how do you describe that consciousness that humans have?”

Second, there’s the way these stitchpunks get their “souls.” The stitchpunks are, we learn, manifestations of the creator-scientist’s own soul—the man’s essence split into nine parts. And, while the scientist uses some scientific method to achieve this (the film suggests it’s a form of “dark science,”) the effect feels more akin to magic or, as Acker himself says, “alchemy.” The devices that achieve this transfer (and the devices the machine uses to capture the souls of the stitchpunks) are engraved with symbols. And once 9 and others are able to release the captured souls, the scene feels both ceremonial and spiritual: The “souls” actually appear and walk briefly to their flags before they’re swept up into the air, turning into a green, swirling mist.

Third, the stitchpunk known as 1 may serve as some sort of metaphor for the Pope, or the Catholic church, or perhaps organized religion in general. He walks around with a pointy hat, cape and what looks to be a shepherd’s crook, and he sets up shop (along with his stitchpunk followers) in a deserted cathedral. He is the least sympathetic stitchpunk by far: While 9 wants to save his friends, 1 wants to find somewhere safe. While 9 wants to fight the machines, 1 wants to run away and follow the “rules.” He rails against 9’s constant questions (and questioning), pooh-poohs science and betrays one of his own kind.

But 1 is not uniformly bad. As time goes on, his religious trappings are forcibly ripped away from him, and he winds up making the bravest, most selfless sacrifice of all. I don’t know if the filmmakers intended this, but to me, his actions evoked thoughts of a heartening spiritual idea: Beneath all the Church’s sometimes ostentatious trappings, foibles and weaknesses, at its core it’s still a beautiful thing—and that beauty is built on sacrifice.

One more note: Acker may suggest here that humanity made technology itself into a false god. Through a film clip, we see the creation of the primary soulless, sentient machine, and we learn through narration that the machine was designed to “make others in its own image.” Its home—a massive, dilapidated factory—looks very much like a cathedral.

Sexual Content

Violent content.

One of the trailers for 9 informs potential moviegoers, “This is not your little brother’s animated movie.” Take this message as a warning.

The mechanized creatures here are enough to spawn nightmares. Stitchpunks meet a part metal, part bone doglike robot they call the Beast, for instance. And some are captured by an über-scary snakelike thing topped by a doll’s head—one that reanimates stitchpunk corpses to draw others to their doom. Countless cockroach-fast micro-machines chase the stitchpunks through a long tube. Indeed, all the machines in 9 are absolutely, terrifyingly ruthless, and we see them not just stalk and chase our heroes, we see them slice, skewer and chomp them before carrying their mangled bodies away. Often, stitchpunks are still alive even after such abuse. (9 stitches up 7’s leg after she’s harpooned, and 5 manages to fix 9’s arm after it got torn.) But once their souls are sucked from them—as green energy invades their bodies through their eyes and mouths—their bodies go limp and lifeless.

The stitchpunks fight back with a handful of small knives and needles, and they even manage to hack off parts from their attackers. (The Beast, for instance, is “killed” after one of them slices off its head.) Stitchpunks destroy the main machine gathering point by setting a barrel of oil on fire and rolling it into its hyper-explosive bowels. Later, they shoot (and hit) the massive head machine with a cannon.

There is no blood—all the victims are machines—but the carnage and peril are significant.

Glimpses back into the human world reveal the scientist’s dead body in his apartment and another body in a car. We witness a bit of the war that led to this post-apocalyptic world: One man, after he lobs something at a vanguard of advancing robots, is shot down and falls to the ground, lifeless.

Crude or Profane Language

Drug and alcohol content, other negative elements.

1 fully expects his comrade to be captured or killed when he sends 2 out on a mission. 9, using a powerful talisman rather cluelessly, awakens the main machine.

9 , produced by that connoisseur of creep Tim Burton, might be construed as many things: a fairy tale, a fable, a warning, a horror story.

What this animated post-apocalyptic nightmare is not , is a kids’ movie.

There’s no blood, no sex, no foul language. But 9 offers us a dark world filled with bleak, frightening imagery. It extends few smiles and no laughs. The hope it reluctantly unveils is pale, plastered lightly on a wall of disaster.

But the dystopian palate, in context, makes sense. We are, after all, being given a window to the end of the world—one of our own making, one in which humanity’s passion for technology outstripped its capacity to contain it. As Dr. Ian Malcom said in Jurassic Park (another film where technology is unleashed with teeth), “[They] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Science is a great thing. It has given us longer lives, unimagined freedom and, of course, this website. But Burton and Acker warn that science cannot, and should not, be the answer to everything. Our technological advances are only that if we imbue them with a little humanity, a little morality. And that, in our insane information age, is a timely message indeed.

“This world is ours now,” says 9 at the end of the film. “It’s what we make of it.”

As grim as 9 is, it seems to understand that in 2009, we still have time to make something of it.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Movie Review: 9 (2009)

General Disdain
Movie Reviews
2 responses
--> September 13, 2009

In the not so distant future, mankind is all but eliminated from the face of the Earth. In the similar fashion as the Terminator films , man built machines that ultimately led to his and all of life’s eradication. Man may be gone, however, but in his place are miniature ragdoll-like puppet creatures imbued with the soul of their creator. It is these strange little creations — actually one named 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) in particular — whose mission it is to defeat the machine overlords and restore the planet to an inhabitable world.

Now, I’ve grown to expect some very strange things when I see the name Tim Burton affixed to something — he has a keen eye for the dark, obscure and awkward. He also has a knack at taking these improbable nuggets and making them shiny for mass acceptance. 9 is the latest story he’s put his collective weight behind. It’s got the bizarre factor down, but I still think it is a bit too dull for my liking.

Mostly, the lacklusteredness of 9 stems from the story itself — or more pointedly, it’s the lack of one that is really at issue. Nothing is ever really explained well enough for the viewer to know what the hell is or has gone on. What exactly are 9 and his fellow puppet creatures (each with a number for a name and voiced by talents like John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau and Christopher Plummer) and how were they created? Why, if humans possess this most awesome technology, don’t they stop Armageddon from happening at all? What pissed the machines off so much in the first place that they wiped out every living thing off of the planet? These unanswered questions are undoubtedly a consequence from trying to expand the source material — an 11 minute short film of the same name (and coincidentally same director Shane Acker). Perhaps an extra ten minutes added to the 79 minute running time or the replacement of one or two of the many machine/doll chase scenes with explanation scenes would have calmed my ever curious mind. Perhaps not.

Yet, even though the film raises more questions than it answers about our eventual demise and the order of the world after we’re gone, it is still visually entertaining. The CGI by first time animation studio Focus Features is very detailed oriented. The dark, dirty and crumbling cityscape in which most of 9 takes place is eerie and depressing. The mechanized enemies are jagged, hard and ominously lifeless. The dolls are doughy-like and cute in a sad sort of way. 85% of the movie takes place under the black of night (or perhaps it is better to say in the lack of light) further adding a foreboding atmosphere to the tale and ultimately to our bleak future.

And even though I’m tired of there not being any movies highlighting sunny, happy visions of our future, I’ll toss some credit towards 9 for taking a stab at the post apocalyptic story with a new, fresh fantastical angle. I may not have understood a great deal of the underlying imagery, but that wasn’t necessary for me to at least enjoy myself more than I would have had I been cutting the lawn.

I'm an old, miserable fart set in his ways. Some of the things that bring a smile to my face are (in no particular order): Teenage back acne, the rain on my face, long walks on the beach and redneck women named Francis. Oh yeah, I like to watch and criticize movies.

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'Movie Review: 9 (2009)' have 2 comments

September 30, 2009 @ 10:12 am Tiana

Im a huge fan of Tim Burton. But this movie was very dissapointing. The story was very jumbled and hard to follow. Its a good movie for people who like to create their own background story or who like to think about the underlying meaning. There is a moral of course, but it did not take a whole movie to point out this moral. I think it would make a great video game, but I do not suggest buying it, if you want to see it I strongly suggest rent it from the video store when it comes out.

October 9, 2010 @ 12:55 am CMrok93

The apocalyptic 9 offers innovative images of a broken Earth inhabited by woven warriors battling machines. But it’s more style than substance – this mechanical tale needs a human touch. Nice Review, check out mine when you can!

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9 (2009) is an animated post-apocalyptic adventure directed by Shane Acker. In a world devastated by war, a small group of sentient ragdoll beings, created by a scientist in the final days of humanity, navigate the dangers of a desolate Earth. The protagonist, known simply as 9 and voiced by Elijah Wood, embarks on a quest to understand their creation and purpose, battling fearsome machines while uncovering the truth behind humanity's downfall.

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9 — film review.

For 11 minutes, "9" is a mind-blower. But at 81 minutes and with famous actors voicing director Shane Acker's characters, the new "9" is something less.

By Kirk Honeycutt , The Associated Press August 18, 2009 4:00am

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In “9,” impressive young animator Shane Acker gets the opportunity — sponsored by the likes of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov — to expand his Student Academy Award-winning short into a feature. You can catch the original on YouTube.

For 11 minutes, “9” is a mind-blower. But at 81 minutes and with famous actors voicing his characters, the new “9” is something less. It certainly is a valuable introduction to an exciting new talent, but by expanding the film’s length, characters and otherworldly environment things are strangely diminished.

“9,” which opens domestically Sept. 9 — that’s 09/09/09, by the way — makes a worthwhile evening for admirers of adult animation and even for younger viewers who will thrill to its many chases and battles. The appeal is that of something definitely fresh and new.

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9 film review

A computer animated movie that's definitely not for the kids, Ron finds that 9 rivals even the visual majesty of Wall-E...

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In what is one of the better release day stunts since Friday The 13th movies came out on Friday the 13th, the anticipated computer animated film 9 was released on 09-09-09. It was even showing in theater 9 when I went to check it out, undoubtely due to some behind the scenes machinations by Focus Features. That with a sustained marketing blitz helped to create buzz, but PG-13 animation is kind of a dicey proposition.

9 may be computer animation, but it is definitely not for children. Based on director/writer Shane Acker’s Oscar-nominated short film, 9 is the story of nine little clockwork ‘stitchpunk’ dolls who are the only remnants of life on earth after a catastrophic war between humans and machines. Think of it as kind of a post- Terminator world in which nothing survived save the nine stitchpunks and an ominous entity known as The Beast. Little do the clockwork characters know that The Beast is the least of their problems.

There’s not a whole lot of plot to 9 . 9 (Elijah Wood) wakes up, is discovered by 2 (Martin Landau), and later meets 1 (Christopher Plummer), 5 (John C. Reilly), 6 (Crispin Glover), 7 (Jennifer Connelly), and 8 (Fred Tatasciore). They struggle to find their place in the new world while trying to learn about where they come from and what happened to make the world the way it is. Kind of like the same basic questions we all ask ourselves, except we’re not festooned with buttons and zippers. What the movie lacks in story and dialogue it makes up for in some delirious action sequences.

9 is an incredible movie in terms of sheer visual artistry. The movie is gorgeously animated, featuring incredible textures and lots of dynamics in terms of character design. Their burlap bodies have burlap texture. There’s stitching. The copper eyes and hands have that dulled coin appearance. It’s sumptuous. Yes, the nine kind of all look similar, but you never run the risk of not being able to tell any of them apart thanks to a number of very subtle differences. The creations walk the careful line between looking as though created by one man and being different enough to not be interchangeable They really are wonderful to behold.

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The distinctive voices help quite a bit when it comes to keeping the characters straight, even if the actors aren’t given a whole lot to do with their roles. Martin Landau seemed to make the most impression in his limited screen time as the curious 2, as does Fred Tatasciore with his hulking 8. With Christopher Plummer in a prominent role, you know what to expect. That’s not to say there are any glaring problems with the actors or the script, but it doesn’t really do much beyond the standard action movie dialogue.

Animated movies keep getting more and more detailed, but 9 seems to take it to a new level, even bypassing Wall-E in terms of building a post-apocalyptic world. Due to the small size of the stitchpunks, everything seems alien and monstrous to them, which makes the foreboding world in which they live even more ominous and threatening. The entire movie is pretty grim, in fact. Very dark and very devastated in a way that Wall-E didn’t evoke nearly as well. There was still hope for that world, but the world of 9 ? Not so much.

Shane Acker was one of the special effect wizards at WETA before this movie, and his digital animation background shows. The stitchpunks chase and are chased, they fight and fly through the landscape with flair, but there’s not a lot of substance to go with the style. It’s a yummy bit of eye candy, but there’s no real chewy nougat center.

Still, 9 is a film with a whole lot of energy, and unlike a lot of recent movies, there’s no fat to speak of. 9 breezes onto the screen, tells its story, raises pulses, and departs without overstaying its welcome or attempting to pad beyond its lean 79-minute runtime. In a movie landscape where anything under 90 minutes is rare, 9 is a well-paced nugget of thrills. Sure, you may have seen them all before, but they’ve never been quite this pretty.

US correspondent Ron Hogan looked up the toy designs for 9 and yes, they are spectacular. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi .

Ron Hogan is a freelance writer from Louisville, Kentucky who got an English degree from a college no one has ever heard of. After dropping out…

Review by Brian Eggert September 9, 2009

Movies like Shane Acker’s 9 make a statement by simply existing. They represent a growing movement to push animation into a realm that’s more than just “for the children.” Along with Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar, Acker’s film tests the limits of its medium. Going against the norm, it presents a computer-animated adventure rated PG-13 and intended for adult viewers. Instead of targeting the typical demographic, his film seeks to broaden the imaginations of adults, and therein demonstrates how the presentation of a motion picture should not determine its audience. By telling a story that could not be filmed in live-action, Acker makes animation the wonderfully unpredictable and visionary art form it should be.

Too bad he doesn’t back up his glorious animation with an equally interesting story. At 78 minutes, Acker’s expansion of his 11-minute Oscar-nominated short is barely a feature. His succinct little scenario from 2005 involved living sockpuppets (dubbed “stitchpunks” by the director) fighting a mechanized soul-sucking Cat-Beast in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The plot doesn’t change much in the longer version, except that it explains how the sockpuppets live, why the human race has disappeared, and how the evil machines work for a much bigger, even more evil machine.

When 9 awakens, he finds himself unable to speak. His hands and feet are crafted from wood and copper, there’s a zipper on his chest, and his skin seems to come from a potato sack. Outside, he sees the ruinous evidence of a massive war, rubble everywhere, even the occasional dead human body. Before going out to explore, he picks up a round doohickey that interests him. More on that later. He comes upon another living sockpuppet, the friendly 5 (Martin Landau), who installs a tiny speaker so 9 can talk. He’s now voiced by Elijah Wood. All at once, 5 is snatched by the aforesaid Cat-Beast, along with that round doohickey, off to who-knows-where.

So 9 continues on his way and meets up with even more burlap people like him, all of whom have numbers written on their backs. They’re led by an elder, the despotic 1 (voice of Christopher Plummer), who takes residence in a cathedral no less. The elder refuses to allow 9 to go after 5, but eventually, 9 goes anyway. During the rescue attempt, 9 finds that doohickey again and decides to install it into a random node that seems to fit. Bad idea. This awakens a spidery version of Hal 9000, the very same one that destroyed humanity and now wants all sockpuppets dead. After narrowly escaping, 9 wants to go back and stop the big Hal 9000, but again 1 refuses to concede.

There’s a lot of that in this movie. 9 wants to do something, but 1 says no, and then 9 goes and does it anyway. Take that formula and repeat it for about an hour, and you have the entire setup. Even with the short runtime, it will test your patience. Nothing that happens in the movie will engage audiences, as there aren’t characters so much as there are personalities. 9 seems nice enough, and that’s about all there is to him. Jennifer Connelly voices 7, a rambunctious fighter. Crispin Glover voices 6, who etches drawings of that doohickey and, predictably, is a weirdo. There’s also a brute sockpuppet, two mute librarian sockpuppets, and a one-eyed sockpuppet.

The dark landscape is contrasted by childish humor. One sockpuppet places a magnet over his head, which serves either as a drug or some masturbatory act—the film isn’t clear which. For an animated movie that chose to isolate its audience by a PG-13 rating, never do the themes feel implicitly adult; rather, only the setting contains grim material that might be too intense for younger viewers, whereas these characters and their simplistic dialogue are perfectly attuned to a child’s attention span. If it weren’t for a corpse here and there, kids would be the key demographic.

Tim Burton ( Beetlejuice ) and Timur Bekmambetov ( Wanted ) produced the film, probably adding their own dark twists to the production and inserting various superfluous action scenes here and there (there are a lot of them). Acker’s animation remains the film’s only positive note. His approach is visually stunning, both in his ability to make sockpuppets expressive despite their construction and the atmosphere he brings to his film’s tangible animated world. If only his story spent more time developing characters that were as interesting as his animation, he might’ve reached the realm of an animation master. Alas, he’ll have to go back to the drawing board, or the computer as it were.

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“9” Movie Review

Shane Acker ‘s new post-apocalyptic animated adventure “ 9 ” began its life as the young director's thesis project during his grad school days in UCLA's animation department. In that original incarnation, the film was an 11-minute silent short that plunged viewers into a desolate, destroyed world inhabited only by diminutive rag dolls loosely stitched together out of whatever odds and ends survived the unseen cataclysm…read more [ FilmJournal ]

I have no idea who “9” was made for, aside from me. It's a dark, post-apocalyptic tale whose main characters are walking burlap sacks. There are killer robots, responsible for obliterating the human race, and they have long spindly arms and glowing red eyes, cousins of the Matrix's sentinels. The story involves one of these sacks (9) meeting up with a group of other sacks, in an attempt to reclaim the world for… more sack people?…read more [ MoviesOnline.ca ]

The feature-length version of 9 is visually sumptuous and artistically ambitious, but it's ultimately a dreary exercise in style over substance that covers too much familiar ground, both thematically and visually. 9 looks good, sometimes great, but it doesn't look all that different. Its war-ravaged world recalls WWII-era Dresden or London crossed with steampunk (Acker refers to his designs for the film as “stitchpunk”), but so did The Mutant Chronicles. As hauntingly and vividly realized as the realm of 9 is, if you've seen one bombed-out, lifeless post-apocalyptic world then you've seen them all…read more [ IGN ]

Acker's UCLA-made short pictured the same bombed-out, desolate urban landscape, one in which the eponymous little creature, a doll-like figure with a body of zipped-up fabric and blinking lenses for eyes, played hide-and-seek with a predatory mechanical monster until tricking it into its demise. Both are back for more cat-and-mouse this time, and are joined in the fleshed-out screenplay of Pamela Pettler (“ Tim Burton 's Corpse Bride,” “Monster House”) by Nos. 1-8, forerunners of No. 9 and all created by a genius human scientist as hoped-for seeds of intelligent life in the wake of a cataclysmic war…read more [ Variety ]

The film is visually stunning. The original short was all stop-motion animation while this has been updated to CGI. But I just loved the atmosphere the film depicts as you are introduced to the world ravaged by war and these little creatures fight to survive. I also have to admire the project for how original and creative it is. It reminded me some of District 9's unique way of taking so many parts of things we have seen before and blending them into something so original…read more [ The Soothsayer Never Sleeps ]

The dolls have numbers on their backs signifying who they are and the order in which they were created. They include 1 ( Christopher Plummer ), the priestly, rigid leader; 2 (Martin Landau), an aging but feisty inventor; 5 (John C. Reilly), who's loyal but afraid of everything; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), a brave and butt-kicking warrior. Appropriately, Crispin Glover provides the voice of the group's misfit artist, 6. There are also 3 and 4, mute twins who are experts on history, and the brutish 8 (Fred Tatasciore), who looks like the Michelin Man and serves as 1's enforcer…read more [ RecordOnline ]

9 is certainly no WALL-E, but its intentions are different. Like many action-oriented films, whether live-action or animated, this one doesn't take the time to develop the characters and their relationships are telegraphed through recognizable clichés. (The film might have been better off without the “romance” between 9 and 7.) But it excels in establishing a narrative-advancing breakneck pace that integrates exposition without bringing the action to a screeching halt, and represents a largely enjoyable 1 1/4 hours. Comparing this to the summer's biggest, most bloated movie about malevolent robots, 9 is about twice as enjoyable with half the length…read more [ Reelviews ]

The end of human civilization is not healthy for children and other living things. But movies as varied as WALL·E, Children of Men, and The Road Warrior are proof that apocalyptic catastrophe is great for moviemakers, inspiring wonderfully original visions of ruin and expanding the artistic possibilities of cinematic technology. The latest achievement in art direction with an end-of-humanity theme belongs to the CG-animated fantasy-adventure 9, a tale of trust, bravery, and cooperation among a scrap-heap tribe of survivors, set in a desolate near-future where an overarching artificial intelligence known as the Great Machine has turned human-built contraptions into oppressors…read more [ EW ]

Yes, #9 must prevail through his wits rather than brawn — he could hardly do otherwise against such huge machines. But thematically, “9” never adds up to much. It's a dark adult film that gives itself over to the chases and frights of a kiddie movie…read more [THR]

MakingOf, site founded by Natalie Portman and Christine Aylward , has exclusive in-depth interview with 9 director Shane Acker. Check it out below:

Elijah Wood presents an exclusive short made from his new CG animated film, “9” set in a post-apocalyptic world:

“9” Movie Video Review:

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Can’t wait for this!!!!!!

yap there was lot of contributions come from the director as the above review been mention. true it was going to be a fine movie for kids with some intersecting faction. the rise of the machines was one reason to improve the temperament of the movie. we also read some good review of this movie over hire too. plot been so well express on it.

http://blog.80millionmoviesfree.com/in-theaters/9-2009-dolls-step-on-the-victory

OMG it is so weird, can’t explain it

Dude this looks sick

The original short was also CG, not stop motion.

I loved this movie. it looked great and you could feel the 9 really fighting for their lives!!!!

I loved all of them and its really not for young kids!!! It was great from beginning to end!!! 7 is my favorite:) she kicked ass!!!!! go see this movie you will enjoy it.

Loved every minute of it. 3 and 4 were my favorites. There was just something charming about the way they moved, even though they had no real speaking parts.

. . . Kind of odd that 2 gave 9 a voicebox, but never bothered to do that for 3 or 4.

Just saw the movie and loved it! It’s a bit short with an ending you can almost predict — but well worth the watch. It’s dramatic with a few scenes that make you jump and cry — I’m not so sure if this type of film should be rated PG13. There’s nothing vulgar about the film, it’s just that I don’t think the kids who hope to see an animated short like Toy Story or something would very much like this film. It’s more for a post-teen adult viewer. 8 of 10, I may need to watch it again!

I loved the movie, and thought it was one of the best I’ve seen in many, many years, way better than that sorry butt of a movie T4 and better than transformers 2, about as good as Star Trek.

good movie; quite mindfucking

stupid, absolutely stupid movie. Animation was wonderful but thats it.

I agree, this movie made no sense and left so many unanswered questions.

i hate it sorry people how liked it

This is the worst movie i’ve ever gone to the theatre to see. it was so boring, and was pretty much pointless. the characters had no common sense, and everything was completely the opposite of what most people would do n their situation. it wasn’t even funny, and it IS NOT FOR LITTLE KIDS!!!

Style trumped substance. FANTASTIC style, but what good is that with no meaning behind it? I was so excited for this film, the post-apocalyptic steampunk backdrop with a PG13 rating had so much potential. If only more time had been taken with the script. As a writer, I knew within the first five or so minutes that I was going to be disappointed:

1. Never start with a ‘blank slate’ character, it’s a cop-out. It’s an easy way to introduce the audience to an unusual world but it lacks depth, as most easy writing choices do.

2. All motivations must make sense. When 9 hits 2 with the shovel, or whatever it was, 2 says ‘friend’ Why on earth would you try to make friends with someone who just smacked you?

There were some great concepts but the writing was not effective at getting them across to us.

I wanted so bad for it to be good, and it COULD have been. I hope this doesn’t sway other ambitious projects from reaching completion ):

The genre of the movie is post-apocalyptic animated adventure. This movie stars actors such as Christopher Plummer, John C. Reily, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, and Elijah Wood. The movie is rated PG-13 and it is not recommended for children. In the beginning of the movie the plot had started out confusing, but managed to explain itself out during the duration of the movie. Like all movies this movie had pros and cons throughout its entirety. Overall this was a very good movie; it was quite different from anything that I have, but nonetheless a great.

zellie is ur stuff in the movies? coming in here like ur some big writer lol, the movie was good, and i gor the meaning

BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i dont care what you people think BEST EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i hate you creeps who dont like this movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! star treck was the worst compared to this movie!!!!!!!!!!!!! star treck was STUPID!!!!!!!!!!! 9 was amazing!!!!!!!!!!! the people that dont get this movie its becuase you cant think!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .

just finished it yawn…post-apocalyptic done to death…Burlap sack hero better than a cartoon mouse I guess but man er.. sack vs machine AGAIN ! Glad I didn’t pay $12.50 for the 79min of “thesis project during grad school” And BTW “I GOT IT” now I want to get rid of it….

Torrents Forever Bitches

i hate you zoo you have such an attitude that no one wants to hear especially little kids looking at this site thinking about every ones opinions!!!!!!! your such an idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

grest movie, bit ruff round the plot but the characters are fantastic!!!

One of my best movies ever! If you think about the plot it becomes a little clearer! i want to do see it again or get it on dvd! hopefully they will make a 9:2 but i doubt that

STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID DUMBEST MOVIE EVER!!!!

GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT ….. MOVIE, :)

Awesome movie! Seriously, I loved it. I totally understand most people’s confusion, but to say it has a poor plot? You’re WRONG. I recommend going to the 9experiment and reading the Scientist’s journal, if you’re really interested. (Or if you’re a mega nerd, like me.) It pretty much explains everything before the movie, and will probably leave you less confused afterwards. The movie wasn’t made for any specific age group. It’s for anyone who’s smart, and enjoys trying to figure things out. Go see it if you haven’t already!

I loved the movie it was awesome! I have it on “o0n demand” and I’m gonna see it again!

9 Is soooooooooo awesome

Fantastic animation. Typical David & Goliath plot. A little weak on the storyline. Lacked a bit of emotion (probably intentional) & had the right amount of Tim Burton “weirdness”. Can’t say I loved it but definately enjoyed it. You walk away confused because you like it but you can’t pick what you loved about it. Worth going to see just for the animation & sound effects alone. Wish they had these sorts of movies when I was a kid.

Zellie your a chump

Great animation, but my only concern is…..was the director high when he thought of this movie? seriously!

Movie sucked… another think how did this movie ever get rated PG-13?? Most of the kids I know who have watched this are scared to death and in tears by the end. Seriously the rating needs to be changed. On the brighter side the animation was great but the movie still sucked. Completely pointless, terrible story line.

this is da BEST animated movie ever!!!!!!!!!!! just cuz its animated doesnt mean it has to be kiddish! i luv the movie!!!!

MOVIE WAS OMG AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Call me freak if you wish… but I think there is a hidden code in film. The messege is clear, we are fu$% with our world.

it was scary to me….

you stinky heads! mwahahaha! um..

This was an awesome little move with a simple message, excellent animation, loved the different characters of the 9 rag dolls. It left a lot of un- answered questions. But thats why I like it most, it makes you think when you don’t have everything spelled out for you. “The Meek shall inherit the Earth”?

I loved it! Animation doesn’t have to = funny and for little kids. Why cant people get that into their heads – haven’t they seen manga? The Japanese have been doing this for years in 2D. It makes you think and doesnt present everyone on a plate for a lazy audience. Terrific … I look forward to his next one.

have a shit

An Apocalyptic animation with fantastic design and voices but without a well screenplay.The music is exquisite too.

NOT FOR KIDS!

I’m I the only one that found the ending to 9 extremely disappointing? I loved the movie but the ending were most of the characters turned into spirits should have changed.

This is the best single piece of animation I have ever seen. The way the music goes with the the emotions of the characters is phenomenal. as well as the way the remains of the old world are projected to create a feeling of nostalgia are something that’s rare to see. Not the nostalgia it creates, but the way it stirs emotions in the audience through integrating sci-fi and apocalyptic themes in a non traditional method is incredible. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie for it’s beautiful animations and provoking storyboard.10/10

the movie was ok, but the ending was retarded. It made no sense.

I cant imagine how someone can sit and write sequence after sequence of plotless action. Unless your a war games addicted teenager. This movie’s scant unimaginative storyline works as though superfluous to merely showing what clever animators they are. And to think how that budget could have been spent. It should have stayed a short silent film.

really, it is the most disturbing dissapointing saddest terrible apocolyps movie ever made. i wouldnt reccomend it to anyone under age 9. it leaves so many questions and is horribly plotted. maybe i didnt understand it. the only effects the movie had on me was the whole time i was thinking about the worlds horrible things and gave me nightmares. not for kids

the comment i just posted is from a nine year old

All the dolls are so SO ADORABLE!!! XD I want to hug them all!!!

ADORABLE!!! BEST THAT I’VE EVER SEEN!!! I DON’T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS! I REALLY LOVE THIS MOVIE! Not the machine, I hate all the machines…but I love ALL the ragdolls, & I ALWAYS WILL!!! XD

Well… I’ll give this movie a score of 74%. It was very refreshing so to say. All animated movies so far were “cute” but this one wow it’s something new. Loved the animation features, the soundtrack, the main idea(for a animated movie) but I have to be dissapointed with the fact that the ending was a bit too “cute”. I mean I for one thought that the scientist created this dolls and incorporate his soul within them to be a part of the machine. He says that in the hologram-video or whatever that was, that the machine needs a soul and says pretty clearly the fact that the machine is the future. And 9 after he saw that hologram thing just went and destroyed it. I thought that every one of the dolls will be a part of the machine at the end and then that machine would start to build science thingies and with it manage somehow to make life sustainable on earth… Anyway loved the scene when “somewhere over the rainbow” starts and then when the track is about to end they get attacked. I loved that the soundtrack didn’t fit with what was going on . Great movie, not exceptional, but great.

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A new era in animated storytelling begins on 9.9.09. Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton ("The Corpse Bride," "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory") and Timur Bekmambetov ("Wanted," "Nightwatch") join forces to produce wunderkind director Shane Acker’s distinctively original and thrilling tale. "9" stars Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and Crispin Glover and features the music of Danny Elfman. When "9" ("The Lord of the Ring’s" Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.

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If I could give this film 9 stars out of 5, I certainly would, because it’s done something that no animated film has been able to do since the advent of Pixar: it out-Pixar’s Pixar.

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Shane Acker.
Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, Fred Tatasciore.

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9 (Nine) Parent Guide

The production's redeeming feature is the creative team's innovative and clever animation. but this story may feel too familiar to be worth the price of admission..

Endowed with life as the last hope of a dying scientist, 9 (voice of Elijah Wood) sets out into the waste of what was once the human world. There he discovers 8 other creatures like himself who are battling an army of machines that wiped out mankind.

Release date September 9, 2009

Run Time: 80 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kerry bennett.

In a post-apocalyptic world, machines roam a barren and burnt landscape hunting down all that is left of humanity—a group of stuffed, sequentially numbered dolls who’ve been brought to life by a scientist.

The first recognition of consciousness for #9 (voice by Elijah Wood) happens at the moment his creator (voice by Alan Oppenheimer) dies. Confused and left alone in a secluded lab, the tiny burlap covered character makes his way out the room’s open door and stumbles upon another individual known as #2 (voice by Martin Landau). The enterprising #2 finds and implants a voice box in the newly animated figure, allowing him to speak. But before #2 can fill #9 in on all the details of their situation, a mechanical monster swoops down on the twosome and captures the inventive second edition rag doll.

Fortunately some of the others are willing to join the daring attempt to find their comrade. But the insurmountable odds these miniscule combatants face make their chance of survival look as small as they are. However this movie combines old standby villains (Nazi-like commanders contaminated with a thirst for power) and stereotypical characters (including a negatively portrayed ethnic figure, a large and dumb bodyguard and an athletic, tough female) with a script that is so overused it won’t leave anyone wondering about the eventual outcome.

Depictions of war, explosions and moments of peril make up most of this film’s content concerns. Yet the storyline often feels tedious and pretentious as it attempts to mimic a multitude of futuristic doomsday films. The production’s redeeming feature is the creative team’s innovative and clever animation that gives life to this progressive series of dolls. For animation aficionados, the CGI work may be enough to hold their interest through the dark and dreary battle sequences. But for entertainment seeking teens heading out to the theater, this story may feel too familiar to be worth the price of admission.

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Kerry Bennett

9 (nine) rating & content info.

Why is 9 (Nine) rated PG-13? 9 (Nine) is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for violence and scary images.

Portrayals of the aftermath of war, death and bombed buildings are central to this film. There are also depictions of corpses, including a dead mother and child. Machines in dog and bird-like forms hunt down and shoot at the characters in this story. One character is captured and carried off by a robot. Others are killed or injured. An individual unknowingly plays with a bullet. A bomb releases a deadly gas across the city that kills the populace. Characters have their eyes burned out. A magnet causes a mind-altering experience for one of the dolls. Buildings are engulfed in flames. Massive explosions cause the destruction of homes and factories. Characters participate in a funeral and are subjected to repeated moments of peril.

Page last updated July 25, 2016

9 (Nine) Parents' Guide

How is technology misused in this story? Are there real life examples of this type of exploitation?

How does #1 try to control the other dolls? How do leaders use fear as a weapon against their own people? What kind of personal sacrifices are portrayed?

The most recent home video release of 9 (Nine) movie is December 29, 2009. Here are some details…

Release Date: 29 December 2009

9 on DVD is presented in widescreen, with audio tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French and Spanish). Subtitles are available in English, French and Spanish. Special features include:

- Commentary with Writer/Director Shane Acker, Animation Director Joe Ksander, Head of Story Ryan O’Loughlin and Editor Nick Kenway.

- Featurettes: 9 - The Long and the Short of It, The Look of 9, Acting Out and 9 - The Original Short.

- Deleted Scenes

9 on Blu-ray is presented in widescreen, with audio tracks in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (English) and DTS 5.1 (French and Spanish). Subtitles are available in English, French and Spanish. Bonus extras include:

- Featurettes: On Tour with Shane Acker, 9 - The Long and the Short of It, The Look of 9, Acting Out and 9 - The Original Short.

- My Scenes

- U Control - Picture in Picture

- Blu-ray features: Pocket Blue App, BD Live and D-BOX

‘Twisters’ Review: Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones Lead a Sequel Full of State-of-the-Art Storms, but It’s Less Awesome Than the Original

It follows the template of 'Twister,' yet 30 years of real-life storm-chaser footage has given Lee Isaac Chung's tornado thriller a higher bar to clear.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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TWISTERS, from left: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos, Glen Powell, 2024. © Universal Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection

Reviewed at Universal Screening Room, New York, July 8, 2024. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 122 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment production. Producers: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley. Executive producers: Steven Spielberg, Thomas Hayslip, Ashley Jay Sandberg.
Crew: Director: Lee Isaac Chung. Screenplay: Mark L. Smith. Camera: Dan Mindel. Editor: Terilyn A. Shropshire. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch.
With: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glenn Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Paton, David Corenswet, Daryl McCormack, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brien, Nik Dodani.

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Reviving Hollywood glamor of the silent movie era, experts piece together a century-old pipe organ

A pipe organ that provided live music for silent movies in an ornate Detroit theater nearly a century ago is set to become the centerpiece of a performing arts center on a college campus in New York (AP video: Corey Williams and Mike Householder)

Carlton Smith, left, and Justin Nimmo pose in from of the console of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

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This undated photo provided by John Lauter shows himself as a 17-year-old while sitting at the console of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that — along with all the other parts of the organ — was being stored in the garage, attic and basement of a home just outside Detroit. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (John Lauter via AP)

Some of the organ stops on the console of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Carlton Smith installs the reed into on of the horns that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

This undated photo provided by the Rochester Institute of Technology shows construction of the new performing arts theater in Rochester, N.Y. The first theater of the planned two-theater complex is expected to open by January 2026, and it will be the new home of the Barton Opus organ built in 1927 for Detroit’s ornate Hollywood Theatre. (Rochester Institute of Technology via AP)

A crate containing some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Justin Nimmo, right, and Jake Landes clean some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Carlton Smith looks over a drawing of a theater organ installation at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The company is restoring a Barton Opus 234 theater organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit that is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Thousands of parts are stored in the workshop of Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Justin Nimmo makes the position of the reed in one of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Justin Nimmo removes the reed from one of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The massive pipe organ built nearly a century ago for an extravagant movie house in Detroit is expected to be the centerpiece of a performing arts center at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

DETROIT (AP) — A massive pipe organ that underscored the drama and comedy of silent movies with live music in Detroit’s ornate Hollywood Theatre nearly a century ago was dismantled into thousands of pieces and stashed away.

The Barton Opus, built in 1927, spent four decades stored in a garage, attic and basement in suburban Detroit. But the towering musical curiosity is being lovingly restored in Indianapolis and eventually will be trucked, piece by piece, to the Rochester Institute of Technology in western New York, to be reassembled and rehoused in a theater specifically designed to accommodate it.

In its heyday, the Barton Opus was able to recreate the sounds of many instruments, including strings, flutes and tubas, says Carlton Smith, who has been restoring the organ since 2020. It also contained real percussion instruments such as a piano, xylophone, glockenspiel, cymbals and drums and could produce sound effects including steamboat and bird whistles, Smith says.

For many moviegoers, the organs — and the organists — were the stars.

“One guy could do it all,” Smith says. “In the big cities, they were literally filling the theaters’ thousands of seats multiple times during the day. They were showing live shows along with the films. It was a big production.”

The Barton Opus enjoyed good acoustics at the Hollywood Theatre, according to the Detroit Theatre Organ Society . The theaters in Detroit at that time, the golden age of the city’s auto industry, were as glamorous as any in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to John Lauter, an organist and organ technician.

“We were such a rich market for moviegoers that the theater owners built these palatial places,” Lauter says. “There were no plain Jane movie houses back then.”

Lauter, who also is the director of the Detroit Theatre Organ Society and president of the Motor City Theatre Organ Society, says the Hollywood Theatre organ was one of the largest made by the Bartola Musical Instrument Co. of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Only three were sold, while the other two were installed in the Highland Theatre in Chicago and the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Illinois.

Of the three, this is “the last one left that hasn’t been altered,” Smith says.

In the decades that followed, televisions began to appear in living rooms across the nation and silent movie houses fell out of favor. The Hollywood Theatre closed in the 1950s, its fixtures were sold and its famed Barton Opus was on the verge of being lost to history.

But in the early 1960s, Lauter’s friend, Henry Przybylski, bought it at auction for about $3,500. Przybylski scrambled to remove the massive instrument, parts of which stood two stories tall, before the theater was demolished.

“He pulled together all of his friends in the winter of 1963,” Lauter says. “The building had no electricity and no heat. They came in with Coleman lanterns and block and tackle.”

They took the organ apart and Przybylski — an engineer and organ buff — transported the thousands of pieces back to his Dearborn Heights home where it would remain, unassembled, for about 40 years.

“He never heard or played that instrument ever,” Lauter says. “He lived a majority of his life owning that thing. He’d roll up the garage door and there would be that console in there. He made it known it was the very best there was.”

Przybylski died in 2000, but that did not spell the end of the Barton Opus’ odyssey.

Steven Ball, a professional organist who taught at the University of Michigan’s Organ Department, asked Przbylski’s widow in 2003 if the pipe organ was for sale.

“I came up with every last bit of cash I could,” Ball says.

But he also put the pipe organ straight into storage.

“This whole project was to see this organ through to safety, until I could find an institution to restore it to what it was,” Ball says, adding that he had always hoped the Barton Opus would end up in a theater mirroring its original home.

In 2019, Rochester Institute of Technology President David C. Munson reached out to Ball, whom he had known since Munson served as the dean of engineering at the University of Michigan years earlier.

“I contacted Steven and asked where we could acquire the best theater organ,” Munson says. “Steven said, ‘Well that would be mine.’”

Ball will donate his Barton Opus to the school, where it will be the centerpiece of the new performing arts center. The theater that will house the organ is expected to open by January 2026. Restoration work on the organ is a little over two-thirds complete, according to Smith.

“The theater is designed to accommodate exactly this organ,” Munson says, adding that the architect, Michael Maltzan, “designed the pipe chambers to have the same dimension as in the Hollywood Theatre. We have all the original plans for that organ and how the pipes were laid out.”

The exact cost of the work hasn’t yet been determined, Munson says, adding, “It’s an investment we’re making, but I think the results are going to be remarkable.”

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9: Nine Movie Review: A Sci-fi Film That Comes Into Its Own After It Turns Into A Psychological Thriller

Language: Malayalam

Cast: Prithviraj, Mamta Mohandas, Wamiqa Gabbi

Director: Jenuse Mohammed

Nine sets off on a very intriguing and exciting thread. A comet is going to pass by planet Earth over a period of nine days. In those nine days, the planet will go into complete darkness, with no electricity or modern technology. How will humans survive such a blackout?

Director Jenuse Mohammed, who made his debut with the Dulquer Salmaan film 100 Days of Love has Albert (Prithviraj), an astrophysicist, as the leading character. Albert is a widower with a young son, Adam. Apart from being a loner, Albert also has a strained relationship with his son. When his boss, Dr. Inayat Khan (Prakash Raj speaking horrifyingly broken Malayalam), offers him an opportunity to write a feature in Time magazine about the comet, Albert agrees and goes to the Himalayas with his son to study the event closely.

The film opens with an aged and bespectacled Prithviraj doling out science lessons to his young son, Albert who eventually grows into the protagonist. His backstory is clearly unimaginative—a wife (Mamta Mohandas, the official cameo queen off late) who dies when in labour, leaving behind a lonely unhappy boy. The initial portions introducing Albert's workplace and colleagues were unusually bland with conversations that read like they were part of a theatre performance and colleagues who seemed to be fans in awe of Albert's every word. There is a bit about his boss Inayat Khan that feels like it came straight out of an old Renji Panicker script.

Prithviraj's Albert is the third fantastically similar character he has played in recent times, after Ranjan Mathew ( Ezra ) and Adam ( Adam Joan ). The brooding loner husband, who battles inner demons that spill over in all his relationships. The core is also the weakest link in the film—the father-son bond that falls flat. What should have been an intense relationship fails to keep us invested emotionally. The writing is so ordinary that there is not a single memorable scene between the two. And the actors seem to be struggling to display the necessary warmth crucial for such an intense bond.

Nine appears to be a sci-fi film on the surface, but with its frames bearing the texture of psychological/horror film, there is enough to feel the chills. This is eventually what works in the narrative, with the elements of horror being downright eerie. The film really picks up pace when the sci-fi gives way to spine-chilling horror. At the large bungalow, small hints of an impending horror trail are let loose—the enigmatic morose old house-help, and a girl (Wamiqa Gabbi) who is brought home by Albert. Gabbi, with her auburn-tinged hair and gentle smile, is scintillating as this mysterious stranger who creates a bond with the little boy.

At some point in the film, we are on our way to figuring out the paranormal activities, but almost every puzzling question is spoonfed to us. Trimming unnecessary elements like that superficial romantic ditty (that would have worked infinitely better as a brief monologue) would have added some pace to the narrative.

Nine succeeds, to an extent, in covering up the writing flaws with superb production value and technology. The VFX, except for that comical fox, is convincing and creative—especially the star-lit dark sky, the reddish comet, and the black, cloudy ghostly invasion. So was the BGM that effectively gave goosebumps.

The last few portions were uncomfortably like Ezra that also dealt with a similar predicament. Prithviraj, apart from repeating himself, is also causing harm to his films by repeating certain actors and worse, giving them the same old narrative. The talented Rahul Madhav, for instance, looked like he had never left the Adam Joan sets. Either way, the sub-characters were all sketchy. Mamta Mohandas appeared sporadically in black and white gowns and bright pink or red matte lipsticks and failed to evoke any emotion.

Nine , despite having an interesting premise, ended up as feeling like the last in the Ezra , Adam Joan series

Here’s What Is Known About the Suspect Who Tried to Assassinate Trump

Authorities identified the gunman as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, a town about an hour’s drive from the site of the shooting.

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By Campbell Robertson , Jack Healy , Katie Benner and Adam Goldman

July 14, 2024 Updated 11:54 a.m. ET

The 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania lived in a relatively affluent suburb in the hills south of Pittsburgh, about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally.

The neighborhood in Bethel Park where the shooter, identified by the F.B.I. as Thomas Matthew Crooks, grew up is “pretty firmly middle class, maybe upper-middle class,” Dan Grzybek, who represents the area on the county council, said in an interview on Sunday.

Mr. Grzybek briefly met the gunman’s parents last year when he was canvassing for his run. He did not recall the exact conversation, but he remembered they seemed pleasant and were open to hear his platform.

The gunman was a registered Republican, his mother was a Democrat and his father a Libertarian, a fairly typical mix for the area, Mr. Grzybek said.

“You’ve got a large spattering of different backgrounds and ideals, and definitely have a lot of mixed households in Bethel Park,” he said.

Former F.B.I. officials said the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit would try to build out a profile of the gunman to understand his motivations and why he decided to carry out the attempted assassination. The F.B.I., which is running the investigation, will cast a wide net, interviewing friends and family members and scouring the internet for clues he might have left online or in a journal.

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Cast & crew

A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event. A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event. A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event.

M. Night Shyamalan
Josh Hartnett
Hayley Mills
Alison Pill

Top cast 59

Jody's Mom

Tour Manager

(credit only)

Cooper's Mother

Main Street Pedestrian #1

Police Officer

Young Swat Member

Kid Next To Riley
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Trivia While being distributed by a major studio (Warner Bros), Trap was allowed to resume filming under an interim agreement during the SAG-AFTRA strike as M. Night Shyamalan independently finances his own films.

Cooper : Psst! Cooper.

Vendor : Jamie.

Cooper : What's with all the police trucks outside and the cameras everywhere, Jamie?

Vendor : I'm not supposed to tell.

Cooper : Something happening?

Vendor : Don't rat me out.

Cooper : I won't.

Vendor : You know the Butcher? That freakin' nutjob that goes around just chopping people up? Well, the feds or whatever heard that he's gonna be here today, so they set up a trap for him. This whole concert? It's a trap. They're watching all the exits, checking everyone that leaves. There's no way to get out of here. It's kinda dope, right?

Connections Referenced in IMDb Explains: All About Horror in 2024 (2023)
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9 (2009) wiki, synopsis, reviews, watch and download
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COMMENTS

9 movie review & film summary (2009)
The first images are spellbinding. In close-up, thick fingers make the final stitches in a roughly humanoid little rag doll, and binocular eyes are added. This creature comes to life, walks on tottering legs, and ventures fearfully into the devastation of a bombed-out cityscape.
9
9 is a thrilling animated adventure set in a post-apocalyptic world where rag dolls fight for survival against the machines. Find out why critics and audiences love it.
9 Movie Review
Visually stunning but scary fantasy for older tweens and up. Read Common Sense Media's 9 review, age rating, and parents guide.
9
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
9 (2009)
9: Directed by Shane Acker. With Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover. A rag doll that awakens in a postapocalyptic future holds the key to humanity's salvation.
9
The time is the too-near future. Powered and enabled by the invention known as the Great Machine, the world's machines have turned on mankind and sparked social unrest, decimating the human population before being largely shut down.But as our world fell to pieces, a mission began to salvage the legacy of civilization; a group of small creations was given the spark of life by a scientist in ...
'9' Review
Screen Rant reviews 9. There's been a lot of buzz around the Shane Aker-directed, Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov-produced movie 9. The idea for a feature length 9 movie was sparked by a short film of the same name by writer-director Shane Aker. The short film is really quite amazing (click on the link above to see it) and I was excited to ...
9 (2009)
The story of 9 is a dark, dark one with a very bleak outlook for humanity and our ability to self-destruct. Within the world of 9 lays the debris and remnants of war and death. The corpses of the fallen lay strewn about, the sky has a steady flow of dark clouds and things die as naturally as they appear on screen.
9
In 9, the meek inherit the earth. What an inheritance. The world is a lifeless, smoking pile of rubble, the land laid waste by war between machine and man. The sky is a haze of brown-gray soot, the streets are littered with stone and metal shards and skeletons—the detritus of a civilization snuffed out. Nothing around here weeps. Nothing ...
9 (2009)
Storyboarded with precision, and enhanced with a resonant score by Deborah Lurie, Acker's handsome, feature-length 9 is, for all its visual flights of fancy, grounded in an apocalypse-proof message graspable by any schoolchild.
Movie Review: 9 (2009)
The CGI by first time animation studio Focus Features is very detailed oriented. The dark, dirty and crumbling cityscape in which most of 9 takes place is eerie and depressing. The mechanized enemies are jagged, hard and ominously lifeless. The dolls are doughy-like and cute in a sad sort of way. 85% of the movie takes place under the black of ...
9 movie review
Best to think about this up front, because it will seriously effect your potential enjoyment of 9, the debut feature film from director Shane Acker. Adapted from his genuinely brilliant Oscar ...
9 (2009)
9 (2009) is an animated post-apocalyptic adventure directed by Shane Acker. In a world devastated by war, a small group of sentient ragdoll beings, created by a scientist in the final days of humanity, navigate the dangers of a desolate Earth. The protagonist, known simply as 9 and voiced by Elijah Wood, embarks on a quest to understand their creation and purpose, battling fearsome machines ...
9
9 — Film Review. For 11 minutes, "9" is a mind-blower. But at 81 minutes and with famous actors voicing director Shane Acker's characters, the new "9" is something less. In "9," impressive ...
9 Review
Director Shane Acker -- with help from Monster House screenwriter Pamela Pettler and producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov -- has fleshed out the world and themes of his Oscar-nominated 2004 ...
9 (2009 animated film)
9 (2009 animated film) For the original short film, see 9 (2005 film). Not to be confused with Nine (2009 live-action film). 9 is a 2009 animated science fiction film directed by Shane Acker, written by Pamela Pettler and produced by Jim Lemley, Tim Burton, Timur Bekmambetov and Dana Ginsburg.
9 film review
9 is an incredible movie in terms of sheer visual artistry. The movie is gorgeously animated, featuring incredible textures and lots of dynamics in terms of character design.
9 (2009)
Movies like Shane Acker's 9 make a statement by simply existing. They represent a growing movement to push animation into a realm that's more than just "for the children." Along with Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar, Acker's film tests the limits of its medium. Going against the norm, it presents a computer-animated adventure rated PG-13 and intended for adult viewers. Instead of targeting ...
"9" Movie Review
The feature-length version of 9 is visually sumptuous and artistically ambitious, but it's ultimately a dreary exercise in style over substance that covers too much familiar ground, both thematically and visually. 9 looks good, sometimes great, but it doesn't look all that different. Its war-ravaged world recalls WWII-era Dresden or London ...
9 (2009)
9 PG-13 Animation Action Adventure Fantasy Mystery Sci-Fi Thriller Release Date August 19, 2009 Director Shane Acker Cast Christopher Plummer , Martin Landau , John C. Reilly , Crispin Glover ...
Dustin Putman's Review: 9 (2009)
9 (2009) Directed by Shane Acker. Voice Cast: Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, Fred Tatasciore. 2009 - 79 minutes. Rated: (for violence and scary images). Reviewed by Dustin Putman, September 2, 2009. "9" began life in 2005 as an 11-minute, dialogue-free animated short that ...
9 (Nine)
Why is 9 (Nine) rated PG-13? The PG-13 rating is for violence and scary images.Latest news about 9 (Nine), starring Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover. Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Tim Burton. and directed by Shane Acker, TIm Burton.
'Twisters': State-of-the-Art Storms but Less Awesome Than the Original
Glen Powell leads a sequel that follows the template of 'Twister,' yet 30 years of real-life storm-chaser footage has given it a higher bar to clear.
Reviving Hollywood glamor of the silent movie era, experts piece
A pipe organ that provided the live music for silent movies in an ornate Detroit theater nearly a century ago is set to become the centerpiece of a performing arts center on a New York college campus.
9: Nine Movie Review: A Sci-fi Film That Comes Into Its Own After It
Language: Malayalam. Cast: Prithviraj, Mamta Mohandas, Wamiqa Gabbi. Director: Jenuse Mohammed. Nine sets off on a very intriguing and exciting thread. A comet is going to pass by planet Earth over a period of nine days. In those nine days, the planet will go into complete darkness, with no electricity or modern technology.
The FBI Identifies Suspected Gunman in Trump Rally Shooting: What to
Authorities identified the gunman as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, a town about an hour's drive from the site of the shooting.
Trap (2024)
Trap: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Josh Hartnett, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Saleka Shyamalan. A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event.

9 movie reviews

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9 (Nine) Parent Guide

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Kerry Bennett

9 (Nine) Parents' Guide

The most recent home video release of 9 (Nine) movie is December 29, 2009. Here are some details…

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Reviewed at Universal Screening Room, New York, July 8, 2024. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 122 MIN.

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Movie Review: 9 (2009)

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