I prefer Life Is Beautiful, which is clearly a fantasy, to Jakob the Liar, which is just as contrived and manipulative but pretends it is not.

I never lost awareness that I was watching actors speaking lines, not real people.

None of these reliable performers can put enough spin on their roles to conjure up more than the good will they've earned in previous and better movies.

...compelling subject matter that’s employed to hit-and-miss effect by Kassovitz...