> Hey, Sam: of the following movies coming out this summer, which do you recommend?
>
> 9
> Nine
> District 9
> $9.99

You'd think at least one of these would get a title change. Anyway, I'm going to hazard a guess that you've got these listed from best to worst. For those who aren't familiar with them:

"9" is an animated film by Tim Burton about...I dunno, little inanimate things that somehow come to life in a post-apocalyptic world and have to fight some kind of machine that eats things up. The trailer is a little unclear. But it looks like exactly the kind of material Tim Burton is comfortable with: sad misfits trying to find their place in an uncomprehending and hostile world. Just about every movie Burton has made has been about this basic theme, even the ones that were adaptations of other people's source material. Burton is a visionary director; unfortunately, so many of his movies have third act problems. Edward Scissorhands, for example, is otherwise brilliant but crashes and burns at the end. Still, if you see only one Nine movie this year, see "9".

"Nine" is a movie adaptation of the stage musical "Nine," which was a stage adaptation of the Federico Fellini movie "8 1/2." Odd as that sounds, the prospect fascinates me. A straight remake of 8 1/2 would be preposterous, but the raw materials for a great musical are all here. Come to think of it, 8 1/2 was practically a musical already -- it was just missing the actual music. Seriously: doesn't the main character's dream sequence, wherein the women in his life surround and smother him until he picks up a whip and a chair and tames them, need only a jazz score to become the kind of dream sequence Gene Kelly danced to in movies like An American In Paris and Anchors Aweigh?

"District 9" and "$9.99" both just sound like pompous and pretentious indulgences in politics and philosophy. "District 9" posits that aliens come to Earth, and we respond by treating them like illegal immigrants. Cue the baseball bat, for pounding home the moralizing.

"$9.99" is "a stop-motion animated story about people living in a Sydney apartment complex looking for meaning in their lives." The only thing worse than navel-gazing is watching other people do it. Besides, I don't think the animated philosophy genre has room for more than one entry in it, and "Waking Life" came first.