$9.99

$9.99 came and went from theaters, but it sticks out very nicely on On Demand, which is where I ultimately saw the little 70-minute claymation movie (I could say stop-motion animated, which it is, but it is very much in the clay tradition of practically being able to see the fingerprints on the characters' bodies and faces). It's about... I suppose how to live a life, I suppose, and that's emphasized by the book that keeps popping up periodically in the film- which you can buy for $9.99 (in the movie, not in real life, I think anyway)- that tells what the Meaning of Life is... that is, it gives a lot of other offers for books on how to deal with this or that in life. It almost looks like a coupon book, which is a shame since the character who is most in love with it, a nice kid, seems very much engrossed by it.

But the title of Tatia Rosenthal's film is more like rounding off reality, perhaps. It's not a full $10, but the characters do try to make that price in their lives. To put it another way, no one character in this film is quite happy, but they keep trying, and maybe life will have some meaning when they can attain some happiness - or not, as case might be. Rosenthal's film, based on short stories Etgar Keret, focus on a group of people who have some, um, quirks to them, or are just painfully normal. The film begins with a middle-aged businessman turning down a homeless man a dollar for a coffee, and the homeless guy pulls out a gun and shoots himself. He later returns as an Angel and hangs out with an old guy on his porch, smoking cigarettes and wondering what Heaven is like. The businessman's sons: one is the Meaning of Life book-reader, and the other is a repo man who falls hard for a sexy (as sexy as claymation can be) model, and proceeds to shave his whole body with hair - and then takes a cue from the organ-less men who removed their body parts until they were heads and blobs. All for love, I guess.

Other stories are a little more ordinary, more or less. More: a little boy is told by his father to put away fifty cents in his piggy bank so he can save up to buy a toy, but he finds that he grows attached to the piggy bank, who he names, and finds the piggy's smile very comforting ("I put money in, he smiles, I don't put money in... he smiles!"). Less: a guy whose girl really wants to settle down and marry and have kids and all of that, but finds that he would rather spend time in his room, listening to records with his three little "friends", little men ala Gulliver's Travels, and getting wasted on beer and pot. So the stories are mostly by themselves, but intertwine by certain events (such as the Angel doing a test "fly" off of the patio and with everyone else looking out the window), or by thematic context.

The stories have a lot of humor to them, with one-liners that zing ("I found that there's not one meaning to life, there's six!"), and the look of the film feels similar but is original in its own right of character design and approach (and, for once, we get a rated-R claymation movie, including full frontal nudity!), but it also goes for deep moments and resonance, and Rosenthal strikes some good ground here. She doesn't try and over-do the messages, but lets them speak for themselves through the stories. It's genuinely odd, but it also gives heart-felt scenes and passages, such as the little boy with the piggy bank (the end of his story with the bank is quite touching), and it values the power of human responsibility with fantasy in equal measure. If it were a little longer it might really be something great, but as it stands it's a curious little find.

It's an animated feature film, showing life and struggles of a few people in a city. They belong to different age has different background. There are a few good elements, but, not really great. They should have developed the Angel character and added more depth and connection to the stories.

Personally I dig stop-motion animation, for the simple conscious fact that there's a lot of blood and sweat going on behind the scenes just to get an object to move. You can imagine what it takes to get a character to move an arm, and you extrapolate that effort into a feature length film with a lot more things happening concurrently on screen, and you're likely to appreciate this artform a lot more, with new found respect for it.

$9.99 is an amazing piece of stop-motion animation coupled with a tremendously engaging story made up of multiple narrative threads, and a myriad of characters attempting to tackle their respective problems in life. It begins with a bang literally, where a homeless man (Geoffrey Rush) with a gun in hand, asks Jim Peck (Anthony LaPaglia) for a cigarette and a light, before launching into some really clever moments about manipulation. It's an excellent start to jolt you into realizing that this film isn't just another walk in the park, and as it plays on, you'd discover its brilliance in its commentary about life, as seen from the experiences of the residents in an apartment block.

We have a family of three, with Jim who might just need his karma checked for encountering really antagonizing moments involving death, and his two sons Dave (Samuel Johnson) and Lenny (Ben Mendelsohn), the former being unemployed and is found to be central to the narrative, and the latter being a Repo-man finding himself falling, and obsessing over the love by new neighbour and supermodel Tanita (Leeanna Walsman), who has a fetish for a hairless body. Then there's a lonely old man who finds the world contents passing him by with nobody interested in hearing him talk a bit (well, because he's long-winded as well), finding a companion in an angel, whom he asks incessantly about Heaven. Then there's a boy who has a friend in his piggy bank, and a couple on the verge of being married having to fall out because one of them refuses to grow up.

The "$9.99" comes from the price of a catalog of books, one of which touts to hold The Meaning of Life which Dave buys. Unfortunately, the characters here seem to be caught up in living their own lives and falling victim to respective challenges life presents itself, and so every effort that Dave wants to share gets spurned, and we the audience, unfortunately, don't get to hear if there are any insights to that. But of course we all know that there's no silver bullet, and the characters here, though the course of this emotionally moving film, learn of that meaning as it applies in their own, with the old man determined to take a more proactive approach, to a connection between a father and a son, to love found and running parallel to that, a love broken because of sacrifices that one has to make, or the lack thereof, and the maturing of a young child.

I guess nobody scoffs at animation, especially one that targets the mature audience – check out that Dr Manhatten moment. I've new found respect for stop-motion animation, and for the filmmakers involved in producing this fine piece of work. The attention to detail is incredible, never at any moment hinting that they had cut some corners and compromised quality. Definitely highly recommended, and easily one of the few films I thoroughly enjoyed in the festival lineup.

An Australian-Israel independent animation clay movie that tells the story of a group of lonely people living in the same block of apartments. The story is told, mainly through 28y.o. unemployed Dave Peck, who buys books by post for only $9.99, one of them about the meaning of life. But we also see his depressive father, his disconnected brother, a commercial sexy model, an elderly widower, a father living with his only child, a young couple in crisis, an "angel", and a former magician.

This is a film for adults that examines adult themes (loneliness, immaturity, lack of love and purpose in life, lack of communication in society), with drug use, nudity and explicit sex scenes included. It also has some surrealist touches in between, that I found delightful.

The clay animation is very cartoonish in a way, odd-looking at first, but very original, with great movement and good facial expressions, realistic clothing and body language. I loved all the decoration of the flats, all the little details inside them, which help to draw visually the character of the people living in them. The city landscapes and city spots are also lovely. The colours and mood of the movie are excellent, and also the music.

The individual stories are great - fresh, believable, and poignant. They depict well the sins and deficiencies of modern society, and the social distress in which many people live. They also show real Australian characters and attitudes, those that you'd find in real world, in your own block of apartments. Raw Australia without sweetener.

The main problem of the movie is the lack of a real plot. In most cases we are just witnesses of the lives of those people, but we do not understand why are in a certain state or why they act in a certain way, what troubles them inside and moves them to act in a certain way - Lack of depth. Only after watching the movie, I learnt that the story is based in different short stories by Etgar Keret, which explains in part the lack of harmony of the film, and the disconnection of some of the individual stories. The scriptwriter is to blame for not finding an element that gives consistency to the whole film and not blending well the individual stories.

In fact, the aim of the movie might not be clear to the viewer. All the part about the purchase of books is unnecessary. Many people will think that the meaning of life is what the movie is all about, when in fact the movie shows that life does not have any meaning, at least for the characters of the story, and that life is what it is. So, why confusing the viewer with elements that don't add anything to the characters or the story line? I think it is a very interesting and original film with great characters that deserves to be watched despite its flaws.

One character in this beautifully crafted film buys a book entitled "The Meaning of Life." While we never discover exactly what that book contains, "$9.99" peruses questions about life's meaning with poignancy and affection. It's sad, silly, very human characters are people we know, and real enough so that we might occasionally forget we are watching animation.

This is not a film for the young — there is no "action," no "romance," and little to make a viewer laugh out loud. Rather, we are offered a wryly comic look at human nature, best suited for those who have lived enough of life so as to be able to identify with the film's pathetically flawed characters, and look on them with affection rather than impatience or contempt.

Human beings, the filmmakers suggest, are rarely able to communicate with other human beings, even to express love to those they love most. They are even less likely to fulfill each other's hopes and expectations. It is a pessimistic outlook, to be sure, and rather depressing — but, in the end, we are left with the message that love not only is possible, it is the only thing that gives life any meaning at all. Love — crazy, misguided, or bizarre as it may be — is all that matters.