Room 999 (2023)
In 1982 Wim Wenders made Room 666 and 40 years later Lubna Playoust made her directorial feature debut with this followup. It is exactly the same formula with various directors sitting in a hotel room giving their free form thoughts on the future of cinema. This time it is not a tennis match on TV in the background, but various streaming services.
I think it is great that Lubna Playoust attempts this and simply re-using the formula without any changes is fine enough. The main problem here is that it is simply too long. Wenders made 45 minutes, which was about as long as the concept could take. Playoust made 90 minutes and there isn’t enough good material to justify that length, and with zero variation in the format, it got pretty boring.
Maybe this is better watched 40 years from now, as the best part of Room 666 was the retrospective aspect of it by seeing it today. Seeing Room 999 today lacks that and comes off as mostly just various small tidbits and quotes, that aren’t very insightful or interesting. Unsurprisingly there is a lot said about streaming, social media and younger generations approach to cinema, and while I may agree with some directors, especially Ruben Östlund’s point about the dangers of algorithmic recommendations, it is all just preaching to the converted - as it will likely only be cinephiles that will watch this in the first place. A harsher editing cutting it down to at most 60 minutes would help this immensely.
Rating: 2.5