Saturday, September 26, 2009

Cold Souls Reviewed at The Cinematheque

Now that I am finally out of my (yet another) procrastination phase, I am starting to post new reviews (and those that are not so new).  My latest review (posted over at The Cinematheque) is for the Being John Malkovichesque, Paul Giamatti vehicle Cold Souls (for those local readers, now playing at Harrisburg's Midtown Cinema by the way).  

Overall, Cold Souls has been getting fair to middling responses from the critical landscape as it were, so my (very) positive review (at least I meant it as positive even though I do find some beginners faults in some of the director's choices) is something out of Johnny Damon's left field.  But then when have I ever taken others' opinions seriously?  

The film drips with a giddy sadness not easily measured in cinema today.  Perhaps not to the level of Being John Malkovich (its most oft cited comparable) and no one should expect it to, first-time feature director Sophie Barthes still makes her film vibrate (humming in a lower key than Jonze's picture though) with a sort of anticipatory delusional quality, without ever stumping to the level of indie quirkiness so rampant in today's Gen X & Y filmic culture.  It is enough to make this critic bite his nails in his own anticipatory delusional expectations of feature film number two.


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