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So this weekend, I rented Southland Tales solely on the basis that it was directed by the same guy-Richard Kelly- that directed Donnie Darko which I thoroughly enjoyed and still kind of freaks me out. I even remember the website kind of freaking me out a little bit. (holy crap, it still does!) Anyway, Southland Tales stars The Rock, excuse me, Dwayne Johnson, Stifler, I mean Sean William Scott, and Buffy, dang it, I mean Sarah Michelle Gellar who looks fantastic in this movie.  Actually, the entire movie “looks” great in terms of the lighting and cinematography. Now that I am THE media guy at my office, I have really started to notice camera angles and lighting and color design, blah blah blah.  There is quite a large ensemble cast of recognizable people from John Larroqette to Nora Dunn, even Jon Lovitz, oh and this guy:

Bring it on down to Omletville! Hey, this scene with the blonde girls dancing was absolutely hypnotic as Justin lip syncs to “All These Things I’ve Done” by the Killers. (I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier) Here’s a youtube clip of the scene.

SHORT PLOT SYNOPSIS: Ummm, okay. It’s set in the near future (kind of weird because the movie was made in 2006 and so it’s set in 2008) and El Paso and Abilene have been nuked which causes WWIII and there’s this whole US I-Dent internet Big Brother thing which monitors everybody and there’s a revolution and a space time rift and it’s really really weird and kind of hard to follow.

OVERALL: Here is a comment that someone made from that youtube clip…

“The movie had good visuals and good actors/actresses in it, but the storyline….what the???? I had no idea what was going on…Justin Timberlake quoting the bible and narrating the movie….didn’t make any sense to me.”

It’s visually very interesting but the whole time I am watching this I’m thinking, “Wow, that really cost a lot of money to make that and the producers are probably upset that this thing didn’t make any money…

Southland Tales grossed USD $275,380 in limited release at the North American box office, and $81,028 elsewhere, making a worldwide total of $356,408,^[27] falling far short of the film’s $15-17 million budget.

Yeah, I’d say they were upset.  That doesn’t even include marketing costs… Ouch.

RENT IT? Nope. Unless you are a huge huge fan of Donny Darko or like to be confused by pretty colors.  Sorry, I can’t recommend it.

UPDATE:: Turns out there’s a whole backstory in graphic novel form that was created to lead up to the movie. That would probably help with understanding the story line. Richard Kelly’s next movie is a horror film called the Box starrying Cameron Diaz. I shall refrain from making the obvious dirty joke.