Southland Tales
by Richard Kelly (II)
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DVD details
Actor: Carlos Amezcua, Curtis Armstrong, Joe Campana (II), Robert Benz (II), Todd BergerDirector: Richard Kelly (II)
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 144 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Southland Tales
DVD Review: The Best Movie of 2007
Summary: 5 Stars
This film received such polarizing reviews, which is usually the sign of genius in film. If you were not a fan of Donnie Darko, stop reading here as you will probably hate this film. However, if you appreciate Richard Kelly's genius, he has actually outdone himself in this, his sophomore effort. I won't attempt to explain the plot to you, just read the tag "This is the Way the World Ends", nuff said. There are so many intricate plot threads, obtuse characters, and out there scenarios that it takes a good 2-3 viewings to comprehend what you are seeing. Imagine watching every cable news channel at once and you start to get the idea. If you do become a fan of this film, I would highly recommend the graphic novel tie-in, which is actually the first 3 chapters of the movie (Kelly took a cue from George Lucas and began in the middle of the story). It makes the setup much easier to understand, and contains elements that would have been much too expensive to film with the budget they had. I think that when people look back at this trainwreck of a decade, this film perfectly encompasses the atmosphere of post 9/11 America, with all of the paranoia, police state, turn-in-your-neighbor mentality the Bush administration has fostered. DVD Review: Hard to "get" but worth it
Summary: 4 Stars
This film, the second from "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly, is definitely not for everyone. The story is a bit convoluted, but becomes so much clearer when experienced in combination with the prequel graphic novels. This apocalyptic-action-thriller-drama is a very dark comedy with a lot of excellent commentary on the state of us right now. Taken to an extreme? Yes. Worth it? Very.DVD Review: How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways
Summary: 1 Stars
I hesitantly agreed to rent this with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago. I saw the ensemble actor list and thought that perhaps it might be okay, if nothing brilliant. Was. I. Ever. Wrong.
I am the type of person that will usually see the good points in any film, be it a classic like 'Casablanca' or C-Grade movies like "From Justin to Kelly". But it was impossible to find any such merits with this film. I truly believe that the makers of this film intended it to be watched while dropping acid. That is the only way this film could have been understood. While I saw the long list of actors as a positive (after all, they must have read the script and gave carefull consideration as to its worth) but in the back of my mind, a concern itched that too many main characters might make the film hard to follow. DUH! So, they had a few dozen story lines going in completely different directions, each one with its bizarre futuristic twist, and unbelievable scenarios, and at times the dialogue was so bad I almost believe the writers were trying to invent their own language. At the end of the movie, my boyfriend and I sat, jaw-slacked at the sheer incredibility of what we had seen. We could not describe it else to anyone we had seen, but only to say that watching it for free (we had a free rental) was a complete waste of our time and we sorely regretted the two hours (was it really two? seemed like 10) of hour lives we wasted that we will never get back. Don't buy it, don't rent it. Don't let someone bamboozle you into watching over at their house. Trust me, you will regret it.
DVD Review: This is the way Richard Kelly's film career ends..
Summary: 3 Stars
Richard Kelly is a modern day surrealist, plumbing the depths of his own subconsious for material. But surrealism is, of necessity, a counter-cultural endeavor. David Lynch has demonstrated that the surrealist filmaker still has a small niche in Hollywood, but only if he can maintain a bit of distance (from the establishment) and control (over the product). Here, Kelly has wedded himself to the Hollywood establishment in an earnest, uncritical and unrefined way. The actors don't seem to understand their roles, the script or the symbolism. Their performance is the absolute worst of Hollywood - a sort of plastic hyperrealism. And that would be great if this film were a joke at their expense. But Kelly's commentary suggests that this was meant to be a political film - about terrorism, civil liberties, and the right. If this was really his purpose, he has failed utterly.
My read on this film is that Kelly really had no idea what he was making, and didn't care much - he was just letting his mind go free. But pitching a script to Hollywood people means you have to make it "about" something. In the process of getting this movie greenlighted and then made, Kelly was forced to explain (and then mortgage) his dream to hundreds of different people. It is a safe bet that few of these people had ever heard of Robert Frost (let alone Phillip K. Dick), so Southland Tales became whatever they wanted it to be. For Sarah Michelle Gellar, a political film; for the Rock, a sci-fi thriller; and for John Larroquette, a job.
It is safe to say that this movie marks the end of Kelly's Hollywood career. My advice to him is: go indie. Oh, what could have been with a smaller budget and fewer stars! Still, there is enough going on here that its worth taking a look at. But this is barely a "movie" let alone a "film."
DVD Review: Not for those with ADD
Summary: 5 Stars
You have to pay attention to catch all the intricate details of what is going on. That is difficult to do in the beginning because the narrator overwhelms you with background information about the politcal & economic state of things very quickly. You learn about the actual characters in the film more by observing their on screen behavior and settings than by being "told" their true motives and connections in a flat out obvious way.
The subplots converge at the end of the film. At its core it shows how subculture A connects with subculture B connects with subculture C and so on and yet how each individual simultaneously functions as a separate entity with their own personal motivations. If you are impatient only knowing bits and pieces of how who and what fits in with this and that throughout the movie you won't like it. If you are one of those people who needs the core of the film to be meagerly disguised by simplistic foreshadowing in the first 15 minutes this film is not for you.
We get to learn what makes the characters tick and what makes them human by observing them in action. We don't get many long soliliqueys about what their "thoughts" happen to be. Imagery in the sets/costumes and the actor's facial expressions/body language express more about the inner feelings of the characters than the dialogue. The cast gave excellent performances.
The sets in this move were very well done - be sure to check them out when you watch it the second time through.
Again, it's really about all the subplots of groups of people - how they occaisionally interwine and everything only makes perfect sense at the very end of the film. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Description of Southland Tales
SOUTHLAND TALES is an ensemble piece set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles as it stands on the brink of social economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) an adult film star developing her own reality television project and Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.System Requirements:Running Time: 144 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:?ACTION/ADVENTURE/CRIME Rating:?R UPC:?043396182837 Manufacturer No:?18283Well, filmmakers should aim high, they say. And Richard Kelly shot the moon on his highly-anticipated follow-up to cult sensation Donnie Darko, which expands the apocalyptic mood of that movie and blows it up tenfold. Set during the election season of 2008, Southland Tales proposes a series of apparently linked events: the reappearance of a vanished movie star (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), now an amnesiac; the bizarre doubling of a policeman (Seann William Scott in two roles); the development of an energy source from ocean waves; and the presence of an Iraq War veteran (Justin Timberlake) who seems to be watching everything, and narrating some of it. Not that the narration helps; even with voice-over (reportedly added after the film's disastrous debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival), Southland Tales doesn't come close to making sense, let alone at the minimum level of dangling a carrot to lead the audience along (even Mulholland Drive had a semblance of murder mystery to be solved, or not). The cast is loaded with Saturday Night Live cut-ups, but only Jon Lovitz connects, and in other roles people like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, Bai Ling, and John Larroquette are utterly mystifying, by no fault of their own. In some of the musical sequences Kelly gets in stride, but it's easy to create drama in a three-minute music video, and harder to do over two and a half hours. Some top critics rushed to champion the movie, as though flying in the face of philistinism, so feel free to try out this incoherent pastiche for yourself. --Robert Horton
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