Tarsem's The Fall is a jaw-dropping visual feast. The colors and compositions, the costumes and locales--all work together to compose an unforgettable tapestry of images. The aesthetics in and of themselves are enough to spellbind any viewer, but the music integrates perfectly with the eye candy to create an even more breathtaking experience. The plot, however, could use some work.
It follows a depressed stuntman in a Los Angeles hospital with a young Romanian girl who broke her arm. In order to get morphine and commit suicide, he manipulates her by telling an epic story of five warriors attempting to kill the evil General Odious. The story he tells, and the movie's story overall, is exciting in the beginning, then seems to flounder and sag before eventually ending as conventionally as possible. Throughout the course of the movie, you realize that not much really happened and his story wasn't very good. (I did, however, appreciate the seemingly tacked-on ending and what it said about movies specifically and storytelling in general.)
Catinca Untaru plays the 5 year old with remarkable natural talent. You forget that she is acting at all, and that there are other people in the story. She steals every scene in the movie. The acting by the minor characters was somewhat flat, although that may simply be underdeveloped characters. And I thought the editing could use a lot of work; the movie needed to be half an hour shorter. Overall though, the visuals are enough for me to recommend this film to true fans of the cinema.IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/