Pick of the Week: “Cold Souls”
Paul Giamatti made a perfect wino in “Sideways” and a rather effective boxing coach to Russell Crowe in “Cinderella Man.” In his latest acting challenge, Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, a semi-famous actor tackling a soul-sucking role in a Chekov play.

That’s only the start of “Cold Souls,” a bizarre but thoughtful independent film that was quietly released late last summer. When the character of Giamatti grows tired of his heavy emotional load, he visits a doctor (David Strathairn, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”) who can remove souls from the human body and store them in a facility until patients want them back. Without his soul, Giamatti can add some much needed levity to his dreary stage role.

This soul extraction is only the beginning of Giamatti’s strange journey. He soon discovers an illegal soul-trafficking business, and that he can rent out other people’s “happier” souls. After all, the soul of Giamatti (still talking about the character here) literally resembles a lumpy jelly bean.

Some of “Cold Souls” is peculiar and funny, while other moments give Giamatti (the actor) a chance to show his buffo acting chops (in and out of the Chekov play).

Despite its outlandish premise, “Cold Souls” is a quiet, leisurely-paced film that takes enough surprising turns to maintain interest. And not many actors could play themselves for an entire movie and make it more than just an amusing gag.

Instant Viewing of the Week: The work of director Martin Scorsese

Before Martin Scorsese won his long-overdue Academy Award for “The Departed,” the director spent three decades making a variety of diverse, character-driven films. His latest, the Leonardo DiCaprio thriller “Shutter Island,” opens in theaters this weekend. For the occasion, Netflix has several of the director’s older films available for Instant Viewing.

Start with his oldest work and move your way up. The earliest available is “Who’s That Knocking at my Door?,” starring Harvey Keitel as a reformed street thug who learns some dark secrets about his girlfriend. The 1967 black-and-white film was first titled “I Call First.” Scorsese gained real traction as a filmmaker for 1973’s “Mean Streets,” which you’ll just have to rent the old-fashioned way.

Next up on the Instant Queue is “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” from 1974. Ellen Burstyn won an Oscar playing a widowed woman who hits the road with her young son.

Not much needs to be said about “Taxi Driver” from 1976. Robert De Niro is spectacular as a mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran, but you knew that already. Watch “Taxi Driver” and marvel in Scorsese’s precision and pacing behind the camera.

The Instant Viewing goodness keeps coming with “The Last Temptation of Christ” from 1988. Willem Dafoe portrays Jesus in the ridiculously controversial film, but it’s an essential piece to the Scorsese filmography.

Finally, and perhaps closest in tone to this week’s “Shutter Island,” the 1991 thriller remake “Cape Fear” stars De Niro as a convicted rapist who stalks the family of the lawyer that defended him. Watch this, then check out the Robert Mitchum original from 1962. Both are available on Netflix Instant Viewing.