X
- 2009
- PG-13
- The Samuel Goldwyn Company
- 1 h 41 m
- 2009
- PG-13
- The Samuel Goldwyn Company
- 1 h 41 m
Summary Is your soul weighing you down? Paul Giamatti has found a solution! In the surreal comedy Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named... Paul Giamatti. Stumbling upon an article in The New Yorker about a high-tech company that extracts, deep-freezes and stores people's souls, Paul very well might have found the key to happiness for wh...
Directed By: Sophie Barthes
Written By: Sophie Barthes
- 2009
- PG-13
- The Samuel Goldwyn Company
- 1 h 41 m
- 2009
- PG-13
- The Samuel Goldwyn Company
- 1 h 41 m
Cold Souls
69
5.8
Where to Watch
Summary Is your soul weighing you down? Paul Giamatti has found a solution! In the surreal comedy Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named... Paul Giamatti. Stumbling upon an article in The New Yorker about a high-tech company that extracts, deep-freezes and stores people's souls, Paul very well might have found the key to happiness for wh...
Directed By: Sophie Barthes
Written By: Sophie Barthes
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 28 Critic Reviews
69
82% Positive
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
18% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 28 Critic Reviews
69
82% Positive
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
18% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
I love love love love loved Cold Souls. That might be because I love love love Paul Giamatti.
Cold Souls has its flaws, and it threatens to sag into a Paul-like morbidity, but Giamatti’s anxious mien and unspectacular shamblings have never been better deployed.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 19 User Ratings
5.8
37% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
42% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
21% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 19 User Ratings
5.8
37% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
42% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
21% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
A very strange and clever comedy starring Paul Giamatti as a semi-biographical version of himself. The soul-swapping premise is perfect for a 90 minute run time... unfortunately this runs at least 10 minutes longer than that. Subsequently, it gets a little draggy and derivative at times but the overall film is quite good. Another fine Giamatti performance to add to the long list of fine Giamatti performances!
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He's (Giamatti) terrific throughout, although the movie, which is more clever than funny, sometimes resembles second-tier Charlie Kaufman stuff.
Works precisely because its ambitions are somewhat mellow; this isn't a relentlessly high-strung picture. Barthes and Giamatti do more with less, turning the idea of excessive navel-gazing into a kind of game.
Giamatti is aptly cast, playing his own persona with awkward anxiety and suitably skewed humor.
Giamatti is one of the few guys who could take a joke about a chickpea-sized soul and make a meal of it.
The more elaborate the plot becomes, the sillier it gets.
A surreal comedy, with dak humor, about a actor (Paul) who is having trouble with acting (because he can't separate himself from the character he interprets), and see a advertising of a service who retrieve the soul from the body (and thus you don't feel emotions), and storage them - they can borrow you a soul too. The same company also works with a Soul Black Market in Russia, with a mule scheme (and in this points enter Nina the other protagonist), from this point the story of the movie unrolls... it's a well acted movie, with a unusual and interesting theme. My score: 6,7 / 10,0.
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Charles Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is perhaps one of the most cerebral and innovative films of the last decade, winning best screenplay back in 2005. It is no wonder that this film has influenced other works in cinema. However, although most movies are not too original, Sophie Barthes's debut film resembles Kaufman's work way too closely to Eternal Sunshine and Being John Malcovich, which was also crafted by Kaufman.
In this Dark Indie-Comedrama, Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti (Being John Malcovich anyone?), and is in midst of practicing for the play Uncle Vanya. Giamatti embraces the depressed character of the play so much, that he himself finds himself with a dark shadow over his head. To rid of his depression, he goes to a specialized company to extract his soul (replace "soul" with "memories" and you have Eternal Sunshine). After negative side effects of being apathetic and being unable to act, Giamatti finds his soul stolen and misplaced. He then searches for his soul with a Russian mule (Dina Korzun) who stole his soul in the first place.
Cold Souls in all actuality is a good film, the premise is actually quite intriguing with its traces of science fiction and comedy. In addition to Giamatti's usual phenomenal acting, as he portrays multiple states having different souls. But its similarity to Kaufman's is way too close. It's basically watching the same film that Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet already made into a classic. So overall, Cold Souls is a good movie, but there's a better version that has already been made.
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Un sujet fascinant que l'étude de l'âme qui aurait au moins mérité qu'on le définisse clairement avant de commencer d'envisager d'en faire un film, un film qui ne sait pas sur quel pied danser, celui de la comédie ou celui du drame ?
On suppose donc que -selon le film du moins- l'âme n'est donc qu'un morceau de personnalité qu'on peut enlever et remettre plus ou moins facilement -la technologie est là pour ça- et avec un minimum d'introspection et de perturbations : le tarif syndical en gros ! à moins que ce ne soit le tarif sécu, ce qui ne donne pas lourd non plus.
Certes, on voit tout de même quelque désagrément éventuel : où est passée mon âme, s'interroge Paul Giamatti, alors qu'il semble très bien se porter ou en tout cas pas pire qu'avant...! Allons, allons, Paul, âme ou pas, tout ça, c'est psychosomatique... et qu'importe si vous avez échangé votre âme avec une autre. D'ailleurs, où est passé le diable au fait ? il est reparti si vite qu'on ne l'a pas vu, écoeuré par ce trafic d'âmes sans foi ni loi !
Un sujet vaste qui aurait donc mérité un bien meilleur traitement et un autre angle d'attaque, plus rigoureux. Ce qu'Ames en stock fait tant bien que mal et vice-versa, c'est péter dans un verre à moitié vide et compter les bulles.
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Production Company
Samuel Goldwyn Films,
Two Lane Pictures,
Winner Arts,
Journeyman Pictures,
Touchy Feely Films,
Memento Films Production,
Arte France Cinéma
Release Date Aug 7, 2009
Duration 1 h 41 m
Rating PG-13
Tagline A soul searching comedy.
Awards
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
Film Independent Spirit Awards
• 3 Nominations
Tirana International Film Festival, AL
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
