Cold Souls (2009)

Dad just keeps bringing back winners!! Not like him at all!! I was expecting an afternoon of pointlessly bloody horror films but instead he brought back a poignant Robert Carlyle piece about mental illness which was really good in the first half hour- before you realised he was a nut... That was I Know You Know(2009) and the little boy was really good in it.

But wow, Cold Souls was really brill! Paul Giamatti plays himself having a nervous breakdown while playing Vanya on stage, he goes to a doctor, David Strathairn (who I now have a serious crush on, see photo) and has his soul surgically removed, he feels great for a while but to play Vanya properly he rents the soul of a Russian poet and is brilliant in the part. It all goes a bit tits up however when he goes to get his own soul back and it has been pinched by a Russian mobster and transplanted into his vacuous girlfriend with the purpose that she become a better actor (she thinks it's Al Pacino's soul and is horrified when Giamatti turns up wanting it back).

You know the whole plot now. I thought it was too good not to tell. Anyway, he's great in it as is the Russian actress playing the soul-mule but the real good stuff was the story itself. Being John Malkovich(1999) crossed with Brazil(1984) crossed with Uncle Vanya! Not really.