FILMS .... with Tim Milfull
Cold Souls (M)
Director: Sophie Barthes
Stars: Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Emily Watson Rating: 3.5/5
101-minutes, now screening
Paul Giamatti has a problem. The star of films like Sideways and John Adams, and one of the busiest character actors on stage or screen, cannot come to grips with his latest role as the lead in Chekov’s Vanya. And the resulting angst is tearing him apart. That’s when he stumbles upon an advertisement espousing the benefits of “soul storage”.
It seems that for a nominal fee, the company run by Dr Flintstein (David Strathairn) can extract your soul and store it until you feel ready to deal with it again. As an added bonus, clients can have their soul warehoused in Jersey to avoid tax. For the conflicted Giamatti, soul storage seems like a godsend.
But with any process, there is the chance of side-effects – notwithstanding Giamatti’s rather ordinary soul, which resembles a chickpea – and the actor’s performance actually suffers in the absence of his soul. When Dr Flintstein suggests an alternative, Giamatti’s life takes a number of dramatic turns.
It’s inevitable that Sophie Barthes’s debut film will be compared to certain other films – the kind of films that tend to polarise people – so let’s get it out of the road: Cold Souls sits very comfortably on the shelf beside films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There.
It’s said. So if you didn’t like either of these films, it’s probably a good idea to avoid this one.
If you did like getting into Malkovich’s head or fantasised about a spotless mind, I’m confident you’ll get a kick out of Cold Souls. This despite the fact that Barthes is on record as avoiding the comparison to Charlie Kaufman: “He’s much more cynical, sarcastic, and twisted”. And there is less of a cynical edge in her first film, although it’s hard to argue that there is any less despair and desperation.
Frustrating, flawed ... and fantastic
A Serious Man (M)
Director: Ethan & Joel Coen
Stars: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick
Rating: 5/5
105-minutes, now screening
Sometimes things go wrong in the world of Ethan and Joel Coen – think Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers – but more often than not, things go really, really right.
In the case of their latest film A Serious Man, the planets have aligned, and in a very Jewish way.
For this is a Jewish film made by two Jewish men, and set within the kind of Jewish community the brothers were raised in the 60s After an opening that Roald Dahl would have been proud of – a period piece featuring a weather-beaten couple about to be cursed by God – we meet Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a college professor in a mid-Western town waiting on tenterhooks for news of his tenure, and panicking about a meeting with a disgruntled international student who may or may not have left a bribe on his desk.
If matters at work are complicated, Larry’s home life is quickly unravelling. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) is having an affair with the execrable proto-SNAG Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is being bullied at school, and cannot cope with poor TV reception at home – F-Troop is constantly fuzzy; daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is obsessed with her hair; and Larry’s brother Arthur is an emotionally and socially crippled mess plagued by a seeping sebaceous cyst. Like all of their films, A Serious Man is a fascinating, intricately layered character study, with Stuhlbarg’s long-suffering Larry only the tip of a richly-veined iceberg.
All of these characters are alternately frustrating, gorgeous, flawed, and tragic, and thanks to long-time collaborators, cinematographer Roger Deakin, and composer Carter Burwell, each astonishing frame is perfectly complemented with a pitch-perfect score.
This may just be their best work yet, and that’s at the peak of an already amazing oeuvre.
The hype is right … which is pretty scary
Paranormal Activity (M)
Director: Orin Peli
Stars: Michah Sloat, Katie Featherstone
Rating: 3.5/587-minutes, screening from December 3
There’s been a lot of hype about this little horror film – comparisons with The Blair Witch Project; rumours about Steven Spielberg’s involvement; astonishment at the miniscule budget; and much hoopla about Paranormal Activity being the scariest film ever made. So when I sat down with a large preview audience, I was a little sceptical.
More than halfway through this tale of a woman haunted by a mysterious presence, I had my doubts: just how was Oren Peli going to scare the pants off us? Well, by adopting a policy of ‘less is more’, that’s how…
Michah Sloat and Katie Featherston are a young couple living somewhere in California. He’s some sort of broker – successful enough to work from home and to be able to lash out on very expensive video cameras – and she’s a student who contributes to the household income with her beading work.
As the film opens, Michah is bubbling with enthusiasm over his camera purchase, especially since it might lead to the end of Katie’s paranormal woes. Dragging the camera around the house, setting it up in the bedroom, and engaging in all manner of tomfoolery, Micah is a picture of bravado. Katie – who has been living with this annoying and sometimes malevolent presence since late childhood is a little more circumspect.
Like Blair Witch, all we see is courtesy of Micah’s camera; unlike Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity slowly builds an incredible tension, and does so without cheating. There are plenty of loud noises and bumps in the night, but everything here is unnervingly believable, and the audience I sat with appreciated every terrifying moment. This is one instance where you can believe the hype.
