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Southland Tales Review

Seriously, have three vodka martinis, settle down, and enjoy the movie of your lifetime. There is so much here that will blow your unsettled mind. I mean, "Cheri Oteri in the best role of her career!"--what does that mean? And yet, here it is! Richard Kelley poured his soul into this, and got absolutely nothing for his efforts. Is there even a cult following for this film? There HAS to be! It deserves it on so many levels. So many wonderful moments. So many surprising appearances. (Amy Poehler? A haunting Jon Lovitz?) Beautiful...odd...a weird, sparkly, deep-ish, end-of-the-world gift from a distinctive voice, aiming high and achieving...eh, something that deserves seeing. The cranberry and vodka is on me. Enjoy!

Southland Tales Overview

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 is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and David Clark, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

Southland Tales Specifications

Well, 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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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jan 17, 2010 21:40:09

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