Southland Tales

I’m not a big Richard Kelly fan. I thought Donnie Darko was pretty good when I first saw it a while back, but I was not all that interested in seeing what Kelly would do next. Film geeks have probably heard the rumors (probably a fact) of Southland Tales’ horrific showing at Cannes. It was practically unanimously slammed and received an overwhelming amount of negative press after it screened. At the time,  the follow up to Kelly’s directorial debut clocked in at 160 minutes. I recently had a chance to see the 144 minute cut on DVD (didn’t have anything to do) and was surprised that I didn’t despise the thing, I actually sort of liked it, despite it being a complete and incomprehensible mess.

It’s clear that Kelly has a lot to say about everything, but the movie just gets so rediculous that you can’t help but not take it seriously, and that was the point where I started to really enjoy the movie. The plot makes little to no sense, it just sets the pieces in motion in order for Kelly to make his allegory to the Book of Revelations (if you’ve seen the movie, check out the FAQS on the IMD page, it really adds more depth and layers to this mess). I’m not going to keep dwelling on this because this isn’t exactly a review and I can’t really recommend this to anyone, but If you’ve seen and liked Southland Tales, you’re definately not alone. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece like some of Kelly’s fanboys or even a good film, but I did find it to be an entertaining and ambitious mess…with a pretty  cool soundtrack.

~ by fineyoungcannibal on July 2, 2008.