Word: balefully
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...Instead of a Shia LaBeouf or a Christian Bale, 9 gives us nine puppet-like dolls as stand-ins for humanity, manufactured by the same scientist whose invention of a giant "brain" machine lead to the ruin of man. The filmmakers refer to these as "stitchpunk creations," but in the interest of plain English, we're opting for the term doll. Hand-stitched from either burlap or canvas, the dolls have smooth, rounded heads and protuberant eyes; they look like early aviators. They are both homespun and spooky, like the kind of child's toy that might be purchased...
...goes briefly into slo-mo; it's like Leni Riefenstahl filming the Olympics of bank-robbing. Depp's John is nice to the ladies, especially the Franco-Native American Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), and quick with the quips - as in his one brief face-to-face with Purvis (Christian Bale): "What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?" "Coffee...
...these are lacking. Few sparks are struck in the love story; Cotillard, last year's Oscar winner for La Vie en Rose, makes a tepid bedmate for the always sexy Depp. Mostly the film displays gangsters doing their thing and brutal law-enforcement officers doing theirs. As played by Bale, the heroic Purvis is so steely and tightly wound, he's less a human being than a weapon - his eyes the gun sight, his terse words the bullets...
...tarnished fiscal state of the Golden State, Arnold Schwarzenegger may wish he were a movie star again. Indeed, he's spoken of getting back into films after his term is up. Big question for Californians: Would you want Arnold back as the Terminator if you had to take Christian Bale as governor...
...Asner, who voiced the main character in Up, has a gruff side that can't match Bale's, at least as expressed in Bale's obscene, YouTubed rant on the set of Terminator Salvation. But he wasn't the lead in last year's top-grossing film, The Dark Knight, either. That's Pixar for you. Unlike its rival, DreamWorks, the studio doesn't sell its movies with star voices. And the films' plots? At a typical Hollywood pitch meeting, the story of a rat let loose in a French restaurant (Ratatouille, 2007) or a lonely robot trash collector (last...