From my 02/02/20 Sundance review: “If you feel like watching ambitious, but unsubtle sci-fi, nothing beats Edson Oda’s “Nine Days,” which is already getting love/hate reactions. This wildly ambitious, but pretentious, narrative feature won the screenwriting award, but if its watered-down and simplified philosophy about life and death may work for some, I found the experience completely nauseating to sit through. Occurring in some purgatory-like place where people’s souls make a pit stop between life and death, Will (Winston Duke) heads a program to choose who will go on and be born with life and who will ultimately fall by the wayside. The candidates have nine days to prove their worth to Will. The Brazilian-born Oda fills his film with ideas, albeit rather clunky ones, and in his feature directing debut chooses to go big or go home with his story, a metaphysical jaunt into a Bresson-inspired unknown. Sure, a movie like “Nine Days” must be commended for its unadorned artistic aim for the skies, but the execution is rather clunky. Will, haunted by the apparent suicide of one of the souls he granted life to, does his “soul searching” in an isolated cabin in a dessert-like Utopia. It’s there where he watches lives unfurl, via VHS tapes no less, on old-school TV screens. You’d think such an advanced world, able to grant breathing life to individuals, would have better technology at its disposal.” Sony Pictures Classics is set to release “Nine Days” sometime in 2021. You can watch the first trailer below. Contribute Hire me
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