Dead Souls

If it lacks the operatic excesses of this particular subgenre, it does an interesting job of recasting those elements into something closer to an intimate chamber piece.

Juggling slapstick humour, political critique, trigger-happy action and surreal tangents, Dead Souls does not always hang together comfortably. Cox has made better films, but this offbeat frontier fable is still a charmingly eccentric, mischievous late-career effort with an impressively strong authorial voice.