The review of Nine that I would have written had time allowed...

I make a point not to pick on the attractiveness of actors or actresses, but otherwise this Nine review by N.P. Thompson at "The House Next Door" is 100% in sync with my own thoughts. An opening excerpt:

"What makes Rob Marshall’s Nine so peculiarly bad is its sheer self-congratulation. We’re incessantly told how important, how fascinating the director Guido Contini must be, and we as viewers are expected to take this on faith, but never once does Guido (Daniel Day-Lewis) do or say anything even remotely intriguing. The movie has no real subject; it’s proudly about nothing. Not the arid nothingness of a Van Sant movie, but a boring sort of Condé Nast nothingness."

Yeah, what he said. Sometimes a fellow critic expresses your own feelings so perfectly, the only thing to do is link and credit accordingly. The only thing I would add is that the razzle-dazzle sexiness feels so forced and artificial that all of the actors involved actually exhibited more sex appeal during the rehearsal montage that played over the closing credits. For the record, I have not seen Broken Embraces (the other film he reviews), so I did not read that particular critique.

Scott Mendelson