The Ninth Gate
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Movie Reviews of The Ninth Gate
Movie Review: The Ninth gate
Summary: 5 Stars
An exciting movie no dead spots. This will keep your interest. Viewing the second time is as interesting as the first viewing. The entire cast was great, even those with small parts. Flows from one scene to the next easily with continuity. We enjoyed the film, hopefully the movie industry will be able to produce more films of this caliber.Movie Review: Lingers
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best movies I have seen, and I have seen oh so many. It leaves me wanting more. The plot, the characters and actors, the music score, and everything comes together so well. It's definitely a favorite and worth watching multiple times.Movie Review: ninth gate review
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie was excellent. Two things I would do to make it more realistic are: Actors should wear gloves when handling the books. One would NEVER smoke when handling a rare book.Movie Review: An Incendiary Thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
Controversial director Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown) has a talent for creating suspenseful films that utilize character actors in roles, which allow them to be ambiguous and amorphous. In his thriller, The Ninth gate, he returns to the genres he seems to be the most comfortable with: psychological suspense, and horror. Loosely based upon the book El Club Dumas, which was written by acclaimed Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Ninth Gate is a straightforward mystery/conspiracy with supernatural elements. The screenplay written by Enrique Urbizu, Roman Polanski, and John Brownjohn, greatly simplifies the novel, which was deemed too complex and plot heavy to film in its entirety. However, in spite of this harsh adaptive process the film is quite impressive, though it may be a disappointment for fans of the novel.
Dean Corso is an unscrupulous bibliophile and book appraiser, who specializes in rare and highly valuable books. When he is contacted by billionaire Boris Balkan to verify the authenticity of the satanic volume, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, by seeking out the only other two existing copies. Balkan claims that he purchased his copy from a man named Telfer who committed suicide the day after he sold the book.
Corso goes on a mercenary quest that takes him through Europe and he crosses paths with some very strange and unsavory characters. He has a shallow sexual encounter with Telfer's wife, Liana, who desperately wants the book back. Corso also has repeat encounters with an enigmatic and beautiful stranger, who seems to show up whenever he needs help of some sort. Corso soon learns that she is not what she seems.
It becomes apparent that Corso is being closely monitored by Boris Balkan, who calls him repeatedly to demand updates on his success, and it's also apparent that Liana Telfer has sent her lethal bodyguard after Corso and the book.
While examining and comparing the different copies of the book, Corso stumbles onto a secret. There are subtle differences in the book's illustrations, which serve as symbols or keys to conjuring the Devil, and Corso realizes that all three copies are legitimate but only with all of the illustrations can one understand their true meaning.
As people around him start dying, Corso finds himself caught in the middle of a deadly diabolical conspiracy. He soon learns that some books are dangerous, that some mysteries should never be solved, and that some doors are better left unopened.
Stylistically, The Ninth Gate has much in common with 1940s film noir, as well as the more sophisticated horror films of the `60s and `70s. The film is very reminiscent of Roman Polanski's other films and yet it never feels redundant or predictable, which in itself is unusual when you consider the genre that he's working within. The film is boosted by a terrific score by Wojciech Kilar, and the combined efforts of the production designer, the costume designer, and the cinematographer. But the film's greatest asset is Polanski's uncanny ability to tell a sensational story while allowing the audience to suspend disbelief.
The Ninth Gate features a superb cast, which includes Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, Frank Langella as Boris Balkan, Lena Olin as Liana Telfer, And Emmanuelle Seigner as The Girl.
The DVD includes an audio commentary by Roman Polanski, an isolated music score, a featurette, a gallery of satanic drawings, storyboard selections, production notes, cast & crew bios, theatrical trailers and TV spots.
Also recommended:
The Skull
The Exorcist - The Complete Anthology
The Complete Omen Collection
The Seventh Sign
The Devil's Advocate
Stigmata
From Hell
Movie Review: Woman is the Devil
Summary: 4 Stars
There's something so cruel about Roman Polanski's "Ninth Gate", something so mean underneath the surface, that though it isn't always a frightening film, it certainly ranks up there with some of the more campy and direct movies about Old Scratch.
Unlike "The Pianist" or some of Polanski's more recent mainstream films, this makes no direct attempt to spoonfeed the viewer the meaning or message of the film. For all the eccentricity, though--and there's plenty of it--this actually isn't too tough to figure out.
Johnny Depp plays Dean Corso, a lowlife rare book collector who, like everyone else in the film, wants what he wants when he wants it. He is a dry, ironic, cynical intellectual whose dominant personality trait is his ego and desire for money. Depp's performance is amazing despite how little he is given to work with; the laughs never stop as his curt, smartass responses to every question asked flow like a bilious current.
Contracted by a power hungry devotee of the Black Arts (Frank Langella in one of his ugliest and most frightening roles) Boris Balkan, his mission is to find an authentic copy of a book called "The Ninth Gate", a text which supposedly leads directly to the presence and power of Satan himself.
Here the mad surreality and black humor begin. It resembles very closely Roman Polanski's 1976 film "The Tenant", except this film has an almost complete absence of protagonists or decent characters at all. Everyone is more less a degenerate. During Corso's ominous escapades and his encounters with thoroughly sinister and foul people (all of whom die when Balkan discovers that they are not cooperating with Corso's search, leading one to believe he is indeed the Devil), a young woman who looks like a raggedy college student follows him constantly. At first she appears merely scary and irritating, like everyone else in this doomed, musty landscape: when Corso is physically attacked, however, we realize she is not an agent of Balkan's or a college student. She displays supernatural powers and yet she reacts to the constant deaths that occur with a kind of attentiveness towards Corso's reactions, looking for guilt or disgust and finding none--and she seems pleased.
The ending of the movie is so funny and so filthy at the same time that we know Polanski is refusing to compromise one little bit. Corso, at first a neutral amoral character, becomes obsessed with his quest for the book and gets in Balkan's way--his ending is particularly hilarious. Polanski also takes a shot at Satanists, as Balkan exclaims to a crowd of them, dressed in pentagrams and black robes: "Do you really think the Prince of Darkness would manifest himself in the midst of this nonsense?"
A good look at Corso's "Guardian Angel" at the end reveals just who she is and what her true intentions were the whole time. I'm not going to reveal what happens, but I am surprised so many viewers were "dumbfounded" by this movie. A great exercise in Polanskian madness!