Alicia I love this movie so much

Wordiezett So much average

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

SnoopyStyle Nine women struggle in their lives. Volatile Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) is in LA County Jail. She blows up when her young daughter visits and the phone is broken. Pregnant Diana (Robin Wright Penn) meets former lover Damian (Jason Isaacs) at a supermarket. Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton) confronts her abusive stepfather. Couple Sonia (Holly Hunter) and Martin (Stephen Dillane) have a fight at the home of their friends Lisa (Molly Parker) and Damian (Jason Isaacs). Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) is trying to cope with her parents Ruth (Sissy Spacek) and sickly Larry (Ian McShane) who are not getting along. Ruth (Sissy Spacek) has an affair with drunken widower Henry (Aidan Quinn). Divorced Lorna (Amy Brenneman) deals with ex-husband Andrew (William Fichtner) during his second wife's funeral. Camille (Kathy Baker) is getting breast surgery for cancer while waiting with her husband Richard (Joe Mantegna). Maggie (Glenn Close) has a picnic with her daughter Maria (Dakota Fanning) in the cemetery.This is written and directed by Rodrigo García. As with other multi-story movies, there are some vignettes that I love more than others. Sandra in prison is riveting. None of the stories are anything I dislike. Every story has something interesting. These are a lot of great actresses.

romanorum1 "Nine Lives" is composed of a series of nine short stories that focus on the female condition. With an average of 11 or 12 minutes per segment shot in one continuous take, there is no time for resolution (except perhaps for the last story that occurs in a cemetery). Rather, the narratives demonstrate emotional conflicts in the lives of women who are unable to escape their circumstances. As each story stands on its own, an advantage is that the movie is easy to watch. There is neither a plot to ascertain nor any character progression; it is not difficult to understand the situations. But we do not always know where these women are going.The first vignette ("Sandra") features an incarcerated Hispanic-American woman (Elpidia Carrillo) who spends much of her screen time washing a prison floor. It is obvious that her emotional state – really her temper – has gotten her into trouble with the law. The second segment ("Diana") concerns a pregnant woman (Robin Wright Penn) who meets an old flame in a supermarket. The third part ("Holly") presents a distraught African-American woman (LisaGay Hamilton), acting most erratically, who has obviously been traumatized. Apparently she was sexually abused; she may have an unwelcome present for her father. The fourth episode ("Sonia") involves a woman (Holly Hunter) and her lover who blab confidential information to their two friends. The fifth vignette concerns "Samantha," a mature and sweet teenager (Amanda Seyfried) who acts as a peacemaker between her bickering parents. But her wings are indeed clipped.Next is "Lorna," a piece that involves a mute man who wants to have sexual intercourse with his ex-wife at the wake of his second spouse. She (Amy Brenneman) does not protest too much. Number seven ("Ruth") involves a married middle-aged woman contemplating a tryst with a man at a hotel. The penultimate episode is about "Camille," an angry woman (Kathy Baker) who upbraids her loving husband while she awaits her mastectomy at a hospital. Believe me, her sedative comes none too soon. The husband (Joe Mantegna) has the patience of a saint. The final part, the best one, concerns a bereaved and aging woman "Maggie" (Glenn Close) and daughter Maria (Dakota Fanning) who have a picnic at a cemetery. The little girl's lunch consists of exactly one bite of a sandwich and a single grape. And Maggie's use of an obscenity in front of a child and Maria's non-reaction is a dead giveaway (no pun intended). The story's conclusion is obvious but this writer will not reveal it here. By the way, Dakota Fanning, who was 11 years old in 2005, looks no older than eight or nine. This observation implies this last vignette had to have been filmed a few years earlier. Some folks, like Sissy Spacek, appear in two episodes that may be connected (parts five and seven). Spacek is a fine actress. Sidney Poitier's daughter Sydney (Vanessa in "Holly"), who looks just like him, is very attractive. Amanda Seyfried is certainly one of the planet's beautiful people; she began her silver screen career in "Mean Girls." The artistic performances are fine in "Nine Lives," and so much emotion is demonstrated. A way of brief description is "so much feeling in such a tight space." But as the vignette endings are ambiguous, traditionalists who like long features with resolutions may not appreciate this one.

WarpedRecord "Nine Lives" features outstanding performances and remarkable direction, but as with many films with multiple story lines, you're likely to become frustrated trying to piece the vignettes together.Similar in structure to Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" and the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu, who served as executive producer, "Nine Lives" features nine vignettes of women in emotional crises. Each scene is shot in a single take with a Steadicam, which is a remarkable achievement considering the elaborate choreography many of these scenes require.The performances are uniformly excellent, but special credit must be give to Robin Wright Penn as an expectant mother who runs into her old boyfriend in a supermarket and Lisa Gay Hamilton as a troubled young woman who has a score to settle with her father. Several of the characters make cameos in other scenes, but the film offers no great "voila" moments where all the relationships fall into place.While the whole of "Nine Lives" is less than the sum of its parts, this is a worthwhile film for its remarkable cast and well-directed scenes.

ERL edittmer-1, you are right on target about the final vignette with Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning. If one doesn't get the point that Close is visiting her own daughter's grave, then the whole segment doesn't make too much sense. The three clues I noticed that showed this was what the filmmaker intended: 1) Close casually uses the word "f*cking" when talking to Fanning, which is inconsistent with being the kind of nurturing parent she obviously was. Fanning responds to this word with indifference, which would also be inconsistent with the precociousness her character shows throughout the scene--if this were really happening, the child would have no doubt reacted to it and called out her mother for using such language. 2) As another poster pointed out, at her age, Close seems like she should be the child's grandmother rather than mother. This is because the child died many years ago. Close's character has aged, but her memory of her child is frozen at the time when she died. 3) Close leaves the grave alone, no child in sight.Once I realized what happened--my wife instantly pointed it out to me as we watched, the poignancy of this part of the film really hit me. I don't know how many times I could re-watch it, because the pain and tragedy evoked by it is too much to take, but it is extremely well done and a great achievement by the filmmaker.