it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Well, the reviews made this sound fun.Apparently there is supposed to be humour in this film and some reviews suggest that it is even supposed to be clever.It's a long, grinding bore. If there is anything funny about it, then it must be for people who tell jokes to appear funny and have a sense of 'humor' - nothing to do with humour.It might help, I suppose, if you've some sort of notion that 'souls' could be real - I was expecting that it would be exposed as a silly medical/hey-wow/rip-off scam to make people think that they'd got souls. Apparently, though, this silly idea was supposed to be taken seriously.Avoid. This is compared to the 'Being John Malkovich' film - it is equally deliberate, trivial and boring - but somewhat less annoying.

This is depressing, because it is not merely bad, it stomps on some very precious ideas.The fault is in trying to be Woody Allen; even he fails most of the time. There is a deep concept here, but it is obscured by the attempt to wrap it in humor.The thing worth noticing:This is a film about performance. Actors have a cursed life in that they have to fill themselves by emptying themselves. The full life is the life committed to potential waste. We are all actors. These concepts first appeared in drama in the famous Vanya of Chekhov. "Vanya on 42nd Street" changed that into a layered folding, making the connection to life outside of the theater explicit.Here, Giamatti plays the role of Wallace Shawnin "Vanya on 42nd." David Strathairn plays the same role he did in the similar "Limbo," while Dina Korzun adapts the Audrey Tautou role from "Dirty Pretty Things."Even the secondary characters are pulled from cold storage with Lauren Ambrose asked to stand in for the Alicia Witt role in "Liebestraum." All of those referenced films repackage Vanya's notions which are deep and disturbing, as suicidally disturbing as they were for the uncle. There is a way to handle this with humor, I am sure, but Barthes does not find it. She empties and does not fill.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

On the surface, "Cold Souls" feels like an unoriginal original. It's being marketed on its offbeat uniqueness, though clearly draws influence from the work of Charlie Kaufman. The trailer plays up a safe weirdness and deadpan comedy that risks alienating exactly no one, but fortunately, paints an incomplete picture of what "Cold Souls" actually is. Granted, the template is very "Being John Malkovich," (make that "Being Paul Giamatti") and thematically, the two films cover a lot of common ground. "Cold Souls," however, is unassuming and straight-forward, earnest and intelligent, and dedicated enough to its voice that it never feels like a work of plagiarism. The film is mellow and contained, where "Malkovich" is loopy, surreal, and expansive. We begin with a simple supposition: the human soul can, through a specialized procedure, be extracted from the human body. That's our big buy, and the focus of the film is on the implications of that premise on an intimate and an economic scale. Enter Paul Giamatti, who's struggling with his performance in an adaptation of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya." Giamatti's performance is layered and nuanced, and playing himself proves one of his most difficult and rewarding roles yet. The "Vanya" rehearsals and performances highlight the three different versions of himself he plays: Giamatti, Giamatti sans soul, and Giamatti endowed with the soul of a Russian poet (guess which one performs "Vanya" best). The better part of the film, however, is an exploration of the soul trafficking trade. Giamatti's soul is stolen by a Russian black market mule, and when soullessness and uncomfortable surrogate souls convince Paul to turn back to himself, he departs for St. Petersburg for some literal soul searching. The human soul as a physical commodity is the basis for the major thematic and philosophical underpinnings of the film, along with the implication of soul transplant, which interestingly leaves a residue that accumulates during transfers. These shards of identity linger, and in a particularly amusing scene, the soul mule finds herself at a Russian video store asking for any American movie starring Paul Giamatti ("Paul Giamatti?" repeats the clerk). The playful jabs at celebrity (Giamatti's soul is later confused for Al Pacino's), the sci- fi/ existentialist themes, and the terrific performance(s) by Mr. Giamatti grow to wholly transcend any uncouth comparisons to "Being John Malkovich," obvious as the inspiration is."Cold Souls" is actually more reserved and mature than most of Kaufman's films, substituting arbitrary oddity for worldly wherewithal. Perhaps director Sophie Barthes' biggest (though relatively lonely) flaw in writing and directing the film is not digging deep enough. "Cold Souls" is a small but surprisingly successful piece with an asterisk that despite a big idea, its ambition is kept in constant check, and it's disappointing she doesn't take the premise further. Then again, Kaufman's sort of staked himself out as the Cecil B DeMille of strange, and a quiet nod to his work may be the most authentic. "Cold Souls" is one of the better indies this year, and if it lacks in originality, it compensates in substance.

The bio-medical industry's hubris is brilliantly satirized in this story that starts as a comedy illustrating the great length an actor will go to succeed in his career. Unfortunately, it slowly evolves over what seems like an ice age into a bleak tragedy showing us how avarice and corruption can ruin lives in pursuit of a quick buck or just a small part in a TV show.Cold Souls brings us a version of an MRI machine that in little less that an afternoon and with less pain than a dentist's visit can instantly manage Paul Giamatti's soul thereby freeing him from the daily despairs that are simply facts of life but are often overwhelming obstacles keeping us from happiness. Souls are removed, replaced, stored, lost, found, stolen, and recovered as if they are nothing but another internal organ like a gallbladder or second kidney that many people live without. It's a great parody on the pharmaceutical industry's relentless barrage of various new drugs for the same old ailments that offer instant gratification but without the commercials that spend more time on side-effects than the benefit of the product.However Cold Souls turns into an odyssey that goes on and on with scene after scene none of which really seem to get Paul and his detachable soul reunited and in some cases leaves more questions unanswered. In spite of its faults, it's rare to find a movie that doesn't show itself as an allegory too obviously.