Cold Souls (2009)

"Cold Souls" begins with possibly the best premise I have seen on film. It is fitting that screenwriter Sophie Barthes was nominated for Best First Screenplay from the Independent Spirit Awards. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, an actor struggling with the weight of Checkov. Uncle Vanya is weighing down his soul. This is a problem afflicting most New Yorkers, but there is now a solution. A company can extract your soul and keep it in storage for you. Brilliant.

The opening scenes offer some insightful humour and intelligent wit, and offers a fair number of laughs for everybody who immediately saw the comedy in the premise. David Strathairn and Giamatti have great interactions and are very funny, both together and on their own.

The rest of movie, though, plays out like a dark mystery or thriller which doesn't really fit the wonderful comedic start. The main obstacle for our hero, and the thriller plot are significantly darker and melodramatic than I was expecting. Although it is titled "Cold Souls", I was hoping for less cold and more soul-fulfilling insightful humour.

It is a dark comedy, so probably a must-see for fans of the genre. However, I think one of the problems with coming up with such an inventive idea, is viewers will likely form their own story line, so if it doesn't play out as you would have written it, it will seem disappointing and disjointed as it did for me. But that being said, the interest and intrigue behind this story would be too much to pass this up.

Fmovies: Despite being easily recognizable, majority of movie-goers can't put a name to Paul Giamatti's face. His resume includes familiar films such as Saving Private Ryan, Cinderella Man, Donnie Brasco, The Truman Show, The Negotiator, Man on the Moon, My Best Friend's Wedding, The Illusionist, Planet of the Apes and this year's Duplicity. Then there are those lesser known films, that are arguably his best, like Shoot 'Em Up, Sideways and American Splendor. Cold Souls doesn't fit on either of those lists; it's too small to fit the former and not quite good enough to fit the latter.

It's hard not to keep the focus on Giamatti as here he actually plays himself, or at least a fabricated version of himself, which further adds to his enigmatic persona. The Paul Giamatti we see on screen is detached, withdrawn and filled with hopelessness. He seems to enjoy his obscurity yet yearns for more. How much does the real Giamatti have in common with this man? With a long line of sad sacks on his CV, is this art imitating life or life imitating art? One of the real treats with Cold Souls is you'll never know.

Writing and directing, Sophie Barthes has crafted a neat little Charlie Kaufman-esquire tale, although it becomes too self-knowing and important in parts. When she dabbles in dark humour it really steps up with the deadpan repartee between Giamatti and the equally ambiguous David Strathairn worth the price of admission alone. However, the subplot involving Russian soul-traffickers is boring and unwelcome. Barthes also deals with the futuristic concept cleverly; in this world it seems completely natural and it is not required to take a massive leap of faith for it to work.

A different and interesting, if not excellent, picture that is an ideal watch on DVD.

3.5 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Ordinary, 3 - Good, 4 - Excellent, 5 - Classic)

Cold Souls (2009)

This is a concept movie, in a way, though the concept--that you can have your soul extracted and stored in a jar so that you can live without its weight--is actually a bit thin after awhile. What drives it is not something actually heavy or surreal, about having and trading real souls, but more the idea that your soul also affects, very slightly, your personality, or your talent. So really what happens is people begin to trade or borrow souls, and they acquire a little bit of the owner's qualities. And that carries along a few consequences. naturally.

Everything is presented in a deadpan comic way. The souls stored in their foot long glass jars vary greatly, some looking like creative sculptures and others like, well, a jelly bean. Or in the case of our hero, Paul Giamatti, a garbanzo bean. (The Russian half of the cast says in joyful astonishment, "a chick pea!")

Giamatti is not my favorite actor but all my friends think he's terrific and I like the type he plays, a schlumpy everyman with Homer Simpson eyes. And Giamatti, who plays a character named Paul Giamatti, makes this movie. It isn't a tour de force, an Al Pacino or Cate Blanchett jaw-dropper, though I think it's meant to be (he even has roles within roles, with his character rehearsing a stage play). To some extent his willingness to succumb to the movie's simple, clever plot is one of its charms.

There are echoes of the absurd and the playful of two earlier (and better) movies, the incredibly inventive "Being John Malkovich" and the cinematically engrossing "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Both of those are written by the astonishing Charlie Kaufman. Here the writer Sophie Barthes is working almost solo since she is also directing, and if it's solid it's also short of its potential, which unfortunately is so obvious. It's a great idea. And a rather good movie.

Cold Souls fmovies. Cold Souls is an off-beat intelligent, imaginative story that combines elements of sci-fi, drama and mystery. It's hard to describe - Surreal comedy? It doesn't really fit in any specific category. It's funny and sad at the same time.

Paul Giamatti delivers an incredible performance, mastering a broad range of emotions and making his character delightfully amusing and sometimes heartbreaking. The tone reminded me of Kafka, Julio Cortazar and at times Woody Allen and Kaufman. I found myself thinking about it for a long time after I saw it.

"Moon" and "Cold Souls" are refreshing the sci-fi genre this summer. There was something in both films I haven't came across in many other movies recently, a soul maybe... something different for sure.

Often, attempts at satire or surrealism fall flat. The jokes are silly, or the situations not credible. But when they do work, they provide those unique gems of an experience that are hard to forget Such is the case for Cold Souls. Sophie Barthes did a magnificent job of making a surrealistic story credible, with serious characters, and involving emotions. Her camera work and lensing are impeccable, and the performance by Paul Giamati is so sincere and moving that it raises the movie. Sophie takes us through a world where one can have their soul removed, then shows us the consequences. And she does so in such a way as to keep the entire situation credible. This makes for a unique film experience, which is so refreshing.

The humor is amazing. Paul is such a terrific actor, he plays his satire with utter credibility, and in a profoundly moving way. That he is able to pull such credibility out of such situations is a testament to his acting ability. After seeing this, I now regard him as one of our best actors, period.

Everyone in the theater was laughing out loud at the cleaver humor and odd situations. If you're looking for wonderful, thought provoking entertainment, above the masses, I thoroughly recommend this movie.

Cold Souls By Edward Havens

The easiest, and laziest, way to describe the new movie "Cold Souls" is to compare it to "Being John Malkovich." Yes, both feature a well-respected film actor playing a character named and slightly modeled after them, and find "themselves" in fantastical situations. The only other way they could be logically compared: They're both delightful and dexterously hilarious.

"Cold Souls" has a simple enough concept. Paul Giamatti (brilliantly played by Paul Giamatti) is an actor in New York City currently in rehearsals for a Broadway production of Anton Chekov's "Uncle Vayna." But with all the pressures of being famous and trying to decide which film project to choose next, Paul is having some trouble connecting to the role, and he believes he might have found his answer when he reads an article in the New Yorker magazine about an experimental process that claims to be able to remove someone's soul. Paul visits the clinic out on Roosevelt Island (an apparently soulless plot of land between Manhattan and Brooklyn, for those unfamiliar with the city's landscape, that was also used as the location of Jennifer Connelly's haunted apartment in the movie "Dark Water" a few years back) and after being assured of the validity of the clinic's claims by its founder and operator Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), signs up.

At first, Paul does experience a very mild sense of relief to be divested of most of his soul. (It is explained that, after the extraction process, a small amount of residual soul remains.) His sex life with his wife (Emily Watson), and his coworkers on the stage do notice a slight but immediate different with their star, but Paul is still less than satisfied. Luckily for him, the clinic does also offer the ability to borrow some souls on hold, and even luckier, there happens to be what he is told is the soul of a Russian poet at the facility.

But, alas, it goes both ways. A side plot features Nina (Dina Korzun), a Russian woman whose job is to smuggle souls between New York and St. Petersberg. Her boss's young trophy wife wants to be an actress, and he commands Nina to get the soul of one of the actors on his wife's list, which includes several A-list, Oscar-winning actors. When Nina gets to the clinic in New York, however, she discovers there is only one actor with a soul in storage. Paul Giamatti, who is not on the list. No matter. She loads Paul's soul into herself and takes it back to Russia, telling her boss and his wife it's the soul of one of the actors on her list.

Paul, in the meantime, is starting to have some strange reactions to his new soul. He starts having bizarre visions of places he's never been to and people he's never met. It isn't until he visits Dr. Flintstein to get this soul removed and get his put back in that the theft of his soul is discovered, spinning the narrative into an unexpected but still poignant direction, as he uncovers what is happening in Russia and teaming with Nina to get his soul back.

When a film stars the likes of Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson and David Straithairn, there is little chance it would somehow be a lesser effort, even with a first-time feature director. Sophie Barthes, however, has a lot more heart and... well, soul, than the average tyro filmmaker. Barthes, who also wrote the film, says she was inspired after dreaming of Woody Allen discovering he has the soul of a chickpea. It's a cute