The Fall

Tarsem, director of the indelible ”Losing My Religion” video, made his entrée into feature film with the grandly horrific The Cell, but his new film The Fall is one of those cloddish, inert vanity projects that’s dotted with striking visuals yet almost impossible to sit through. In the 1930s, a girl in a hospital hears a tale of multiethnic crime fighters — a story scattered to the point of incoherence. The images, shot in exotic locations around the world, include an orange desert, a blue city, and a theater that looks like an M.C. Escher print. They would all make great album covers. D+