Nine : Not a 10 and Certainly Not an 8-1/2

You (Daniel Day-Lewis) are a famous director scheduled to make your next film. Your producer is throwing money at you; a hundred skilled technicians are ready to turn your whims into cinema reality; and everywhere, beautiful women (Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren) throw themselves at you, begging you to use them. So of course you/re miserable — because, at the moment, as a creative filmmaker, you can't get it up.

Nine , the perplexing new film based on the 1982 Broadway musical, is inspired by Federico Fellini's landmark 1963 comedy-fantasy 8-1/2 . After achieving a...