The Fall

Director Tarsem Singh is probably most famous for vivisecting a horse. You remember the moment: it happened in the Jennifer Lopez shitfest known as The Cell, just as the Lopez character descended into the mind of a serial killer. The horse was sliced and diced by huge panels of glass that came crashing down from the ceiling, and unsettling as it was, this beastly little sequence honestly did constitute the most enjoyable part of the whole wretched movie. Happily, Mr. Singh seems to have found his muse: though reviews for his newest flick, The Fall, have been occasionally grumpy, both David Fincher and Spike Jonze apparently loved the thing, going so far as to hustle for its limited release after the flick spent two years gathering dust.

The Fall follows a young girl through her convalescence in a hospital, where she is told a series of almost-true stories by a bitter silent-film stuntman. As her innocent young mind tries to conjure up images to go with his jaded old-man rants, a surreal, poetic glimpse is revealed of the way grownup callousness intersects with youthful purity. Or something like that. Anyway, the visuals are lovely and trippy. At least for the moment, The Fall is showing only at Cinema Paradiso (503 SE 6th Street, Fort Lauderdale), and only through tomorrow. The show starts at 8 p.m.; tickets cost $8. Visit www.fliff.com.
Fri., July 18, 2008