The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz (2000) User Reviews

I'm impressed.

[The Truth · 8/10 · 24 August 2000]

During my cinematic explorations I've seen a lot of of far out movies, but The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz has got to be one of the strangest. It's a paranoid yet hilarious film, mixing post-modern end-of-the-world visions with biblical ones. It's one heck of a ride, and though the budget has obviously been quite small, the creators of the film have not let the finances bind their imagination.

In The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz the fair city of London stands on a brink; a solar eclipse is going to darken the skies, and madness begins to emerge. Arcanely dressed Thomas Katz rises from the sewer, and it soon becomes obvious that he is the harbinger (or even the cause) of the chaos to come. The only hope lies in a blind police commander, who is deeply connected with the spirit world. Can he save the white astral child who represents life before Thomas Katz goes through his weird series of metamorphosis, thus sealing the fate of London. And what is Dave going to do about it? What, don't you know who Dave is? Well, he knows who you are, and after you've seen the film you understand why.

When I saw the film the director, Ben Hopkins, was there to present it; he told that much of the dialogue was done by improvisation, and many of the scenes were invented right before they were shot. It's not hard to believe those claims. The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz is not thematical whole; instead it is a series of funny, eerie and surreal scenes portraying the chaos that inhabits our world. While some of these scenes may not work, most of them are, in all their absurdness, scaringly accurate. This clarity of vision covers for the lack of coherence, and makes The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz a worthwhile watch. In it's depiction of irrationality and chaos the film owes much to Luis Buñuel (a debt it openly admits), and it could be even said that this is Buñuel for the post-modern age. Still, the film is highly original in it's own right, and such comparisons should not be taken as claims of plagiarism. Ben Hopkins is not the new Buñuel, but The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz is a film Buñuel would've been proud of.

We Won't Get Another Movie Like This Until The Next Millennium

[Eumenides_0 · 8/10 · 29 March 2009]

A mysterious man emerges from a sewer and takes a cab on M25. Soon he changes places with the driver. As the story progresses, this man, called Tomas Katz, continues to change places with other people (hence his nine lives). Alien, spirit, demon, whatever he is, he's come to bring about the end of the world. He intends to achieve that by killing the Astral Child.

Constables everywhere start reporting absurd situations when Katz (Tom Fisher) arrives in London: whispering windows; underground stations completely disappearing; the Bank of England losing tons of money; children going crazy. And all society can do is set up an emergency broadcast with a group of clueless commentators to discuss what's going on and what can be done.

Of course the Scotland Yard is already on the job, and the Chief Constable (Ian McNeice) is on top of things; and the fact that he's blind and has mystical visions is only an advantage in this otherworldly crisis, since he's sensed the Astral Child is dying and must be saved.

Director Ben Hopkins, a filmmaker unknown to me until I watched this film by mere chance, shows intelligence, humor and some originality in his approach to filmmaking. The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz blends end-of-the-world millennium anxieties with non-linear storytelling and dark humor, producing a film experience that should leave any fan of the absurd and the strange delighted. Hopkins shoots mostly in black-and-white, but he experiments with several textures: the image can go from clean black-and-white to the grainy, sooty feel of old silent movies; at one point he adds inter-titles. Some times he deliberately shoots things out of focus, and he even uses the old iris shot. Clearly a fan of classic cinema.

He's also fond of manipulating the image. At one point Tomas Katz meets Dave, the guy who's in charge of monitoring every public camera in London. Dave sits in a huge room with thousands of screens and he's bored. So Katz gives him the power to erase whatever he wants from the pictures. And slowly Dave begins erasing reality: pigeons, cars, skirts, clouds, buildings, people, everything starts disappearing. My favorite example is when he erases cars and we can still see people seated in mid-air, holding a non-existent wheel. Hopkins keeps playing with image and viewers' expectations until the end.

Tom Fisher and Ian McNeice give solid performances, with McNeice stealing the show as the implausible blind constable with supernatural powers. Unlikely as he may sound, McNeice grounds him so well in humanity that he becomes a very likable character.

The movie has a disjointed, episodic feel. It's also clear that Hopkins shot this movie on a very short budget, but I think that is only an advantage, giving it a decadent, trashy feel that suits the end of the world. You don't really need money to make a great movie, just imagination and resourcefulness. And even with its apparent lack of professionalism, The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz is still funnier, smarter and tenser than many apocalyptic, catastrophic but bland disaster movies.

Apocalyptic comedy/art-house

[thomasacker · 6/10 · 12 May 2006]

This black and white film was shot on a low budget in London. It is quite funny, but occasionally in fact often very odd. I think the oddness may have been because the production was German and they have a different sense of humour over there or alternatively it may have been because the director was just having a laugh with his Art School mates.

Very funny in places though. I enjoyed it.

Apparently I have to write more so I will also say that the film uses old testament themes to play out an apocalypse in contemporary London. Much of this is quite interesting however according to my mum "the film could have done with better editing". I would say this is accurate

Surreal Adventure

[haapaq · 10/10 · 25 February 2006]

How do I describe this one of a kind masterpiece?

I could tell you to throw the work of David Lynch, Monty Python, Stanley Kubrick, Guy Maddin, and Maya Deren into a blender, and you might have an idea as to what this film will be like.

This film is extremely clever, and very thought provoking. However, one can also enjoy loud bursts of laughter throughout this film as well. The comedy is very fresh and even irreverent at times, making it a great dark comedy for those who like a more intellectual film rather than a box-office hit.

This film is not for narrow minded people. If you can't sit through a film that requires constant thought, you're best to just stay away and prevent people from bashing a great film.

I was pleasantly surprised by this intellectual film.

[kezmeister · 26 March 2004]

This is a film that has been improvised, and you can tell from some of the rather sketchy scenes. Some of the acting comes into its own from this freedom to improvise, and I especially noted the acting of the young Joshua Morrall, who acts the football captain. He really shone through on the screen, and I'm sure that he will blossom into a fine actor. Some of the elder, more accomplished actors seemed a little uncomfortable with the weight of improvising, but all of the characters come out with a lot of depth, and the film comes together very nicely because of it. Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by this films turnout. I highly recommend it.

even the bollards

[LunarPoise · 6/10 · 1 June 2011]

Ben Hopkins in The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz presents a Kafkaesque take on London on the verge of apocalypse. Ian McNeice is a million miles from Bert in Doc Martin, reveling in the role of the blind police inspector trying, through psychic means, to make sense of it all. His enjoyment of the role is infectious. There are some genuinely funny set-ups here, carried off by a cast not afraid to go for high camp. The comedy works most of the time, but when deeper meanings are the target the film is a little hit-and-miss. Shot ultra-low budget, it looks like a very slick student movie, but has enough laughs and surprises to overcome its aesthetic limitations. The films big achievement is to present London in a fresh, and vaguely frightening, way. More of interest to aspiring lo-budget filmmakers than a general audience.

A great mind-trip

[sashamalchik · 10/10 · 13 January 2006]

This movie defies description, categorization, genre placement. There is simply almost nothing like it - a clever mind trip that relentlessly weaves the plot in a neck-breaking-paced surreal, absurdest, postmodern apocalyptic story with a great soundtrack, trippiest image sequences, great sense of humor, and deep paranoia and darkness. Despite using seemingly gimmicky effects and tricks, very low budget and mostly black-and-white shooting, this movie feels so well done and so well narrated, they don't hinder it at all as they would many other movies - instead, as if on the height of its "genre", this movie absolutely flourishes with them, as the very best silent movies do on their own unhindered by the absence of sound. A must see, but also definitely a "not-for-everyone-er".

great.

[tai_ward · 10/10 · 21 December 2000]

This has to be one of the oddest movies that I ever laughed hysterically at. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival where half of the people laughed at everything like me, and the other half walked out. If you love insane humor, check it out. That is if it ever gets a distribution contract, which it definitely should. If it does ever come to a rental house near you, instant cult classic status.

Makes David Lynch seem ho-hum and logical

[billyfish · 4/10 · 31 July 2005]

Although this movie has the look and feel of something a high school student turned in for his film-making class final project, it is worth watching if you enjoy absurd or surreal vignettes. Make sure you don't expect to get anything meaningful out of it, however. It does poke fun at various elements of society -- I especially liked the "emergency broadcast" talk program on the BBC, which was only slightly more bizarre and irrelevant than most of these talking head programs. The Ouija board scenes were also hilarious. In fact, the more I think about individual scenes, the more I appreciate having stumbled across this film.

A day of darkness

[richard_sleboe · 9/10 · 6 February 2008]

In the Revelation of St. Peter, it is said that a false Messiah will come, and that Henoch and Elijah will appear to expose the impostor. "The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz" draws heavily on such doomsday stories, canonical as well as apocryphal. A solar eclipse is imminent, the astral child is dying, judgment is coming, and, perhaps worst of all, London's tube stations are disappearing. Enter Thomas Katz, a shape-shifting space alien coughed up by a manhole off the M25 motorway. Under the watchful eyes of London's inscrutable chief of police, Katz takes over a string of high-profile identities to set in motion a vicious plan. But where does it lead? Will it, like the M25, eventually circle back on itself? Only Katz himself knows. Or does he? After all, we don't really know who he even is. Extremely inspired nonsense, miraculously produced by veteran German soap opera writer Hans W. Geissendörfer. Did this ever play in theaters? Too bad if it didn't.

waste of lifetime

[zinnsoldat · 3/10 · 12 March 2012]

With this film I'm actually suspecting an all out con game, an elaborate joke, since it's just too nonsensical to even take seriously. The makers are probably laughing about the fact that people are willing to give them awards for it.

And even if I see this as comedy, this film still is too incoherent, too packed full of stuff and it has too many switches in style to even be watchable. That said, it also doesn't lack good ideas. I even laughed a couple of times, but as a whole it's just overdone, boring and probably just too low-budget for what it's trying to do. As soon as the mythical nonsense starts, all the atmosphere just evaporates. That's when I wanted to turn it off. And I should have, since it turned out to be a waste of my precious lifetime, really.

It's a shame, since the idea actually had potential, else I wouldn't have wanted to watch it in the first place.

Even the comparison with Buñuel in some of the other reviews is laughable, since Buñuel didn't aim for just nonsensical. He aimed for the surreal, which involves much more than ridiculing aspects of society (although it definitely has a part in it too). It seems that a lot of "artsy" people haven't quite noticed the difference between the two concepts yet.

Well, I quite like that movie

[StagerLee · 10/10 · 25 January 2005]

You know, if you want to see something that will remind both of David Linch and Flann O'Brian, you will have to see that 9 lives. But remember - this drama won't help you to workout the positive point of view to the world. As usual for English absurd, this movie is rather dim and melancholic. Though the humor is bright and, considering the fact it was made almost without of any scripts, by only alive human inspiration, this is coming close to the highest level. I would not say I have understood something new about myself or someone else on this planet, but I certainly got the idea that not only Monty Pytons does something strange, and I'd say beautifully strange, in England.

Big cabbage of a movie

[critiquer · 5 October 2003]

As the movie started, I have expected somehow good picture, an intriguing mix of art and expressionism. And I've got all of that, but in the very bad way. The movie starts very promising (accelerated crowd in London with techno soundtrack + first blust of Tomas) but that's where ends everything nice and reign of absurd starts. And it made me starting to hate the movie, and left me confused and angry. I'm not a huge fan of art movies but I could watch anything while it has a logical story to follow. And, the most important, while it is tasteful. This movie isn't! It has a short story of the end of the world with many unconnected and unnecessary scenes which spoil the whole movie. I am a huge fan of Monty Pyton. It isn't very logical but it is very tasteful. This movie is mainly a BAD TASTE.

Ketchup With Kafka

[phelix-josie · 10/10 · 28 June 2018]

I could go on and on. But first, Hi Bert!

Polished Eraserhead Metropolis, 30s/80s style indie with more polish. A few "extra" madcap scenes that tried the dead, but overall spectacular. Fantasy all-day marathon:

9 Lives of Thomas Katz

Element of crime (sewer grate motif) Pontypool Decoder Kontroller Pi Dave Dies in the End Coffee and cigarettes Metropolis

An excellent hum of sweet nothingness

[vausham · 10/10 · 25 June 2012]

Have we created too much? Is our life heading nowhere in this arena of complexity? The nine lives of Thomas Katz tries to run down the path of removing every complexity. The overwhelming journey and the attractiveness of this changing world makes this movie a masterpiece. It might also highlight that by giving people something they are unconsciously/emotionally seeking you can overcome desire. And if desire dies, there is no sense left in what is around you. If everyone reaches this state, there is no need for so many things. Your consciousness doesn't mean anything then and you are with the source of everything. This one of the many interpretations that you can draw from the movie. Every different perception will get a different sense out it.

If you can suppress a yawn, then go see it!

[patrick-braley · 1/10 · 5 February 2008]

I am adding my comments somewhat late, it seems. I read most of those written before mine, so that my judgment may lack some spontaneity. It is now impossible for me to dissociate my personal impressions from those of some of the other viewers. But something really weird strikes me: few dare say that the film is a bore and a waste of time. That it's simply fashionable to make pseudo-intellectual comments, staying aloof as it were, for fear of being pronounced a Phillistine, is more than obvious. That this movie is radically different from the usual Hollywood flicks, no one (not even me) will dispute. But does this non-conformism necessarily make it an enjoyable movie, I am not too sure. I sat thru the whole show, not really feeling that I was totally wasting my precious time, but not feeling at all enriched by the experience either. The least I can say is that it is curious, aims to put off the viewer by its nonsensical story, while drawing no conclusion from it. Now and then, I had a glimmer of hope -- were we about to have something in the vein of Monty Python's flying circus? But no -- we were left high and dry, and the show reverted to its previous ineptitude. My advice: if you have time to waste, it's better than nothing. But I can think of a million things worth doing instead.