Stuart Klawans:
Speaking of frantic: let me digress to warn you about Nine, the latest act of musical aggression from director Rob Marshall. I don’t know what he’s got against his fictionalized subject, Federico Fellini (or against Vincente Minnelli, for that matter), but he’s made sure that the score is orchestrated to the thickness of a seventeen-car pileup; the vocals are mixed to the level of screeching metal and shattering glass; and
the editing approximates the moment of impact, when your head snaps every which way. Penélope Cruz escapes from the catastrophe
unscratched, which shows she really can do anything. But Nine reveals that Daniel Day-Lewis does have his limits. He cannot sell a patter song while clambering up and down a jungle gym and screaming in an
Italian accent.
The latter is clearly more DeNiro territory.
