A subversive and annihilistic satire on America, lurching from black comedy to farce, from dramatic insight to superficial jokes
Comment
04/26/08
Southland Tales (2007)
34 %
Reviews Counted: 85 Fresh: 29 Rotten:56 Average Rating: 4.4/10
Consensus:
Southland Tales, while offering an intriguing vision of the future, remains frustratingly incoherent and unpolished.
Runtime: 2 hrs 24 mins
Theatrical Release: Nov 14, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $227,365
Synopsis: Director Richard Kelly’s follow-up to 2001’s surprisingly popular DONNIE DARKO is a sprawling dystopian satire featuring an all-star cast and a storyline that splinters off into strange and unexpected places. The film begins with a nuclear explosion in Texas, which sparks a full-scale... [More]
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nora Dunn, Christopher Lambert
Director: Richard Kelly
Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producer: Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes
Composer: Moby
Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producer: Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes
Composer: Moby
Reviews
Top Critic
Although it's by any reasonable means a flawed film, Southland Tales demands watching, if only for its cinematic achievements.
07/31/08
Sets up such a pretense of intellectualism it fools its audience into believing it's on a plain they can't understand...
05/03/08
When it's not being obstinately stupid, Southland Tales is just difficult to watch.
03/21/08
While Donnie Darko is a fine film regardless of your level of sobriety, Richard Kelly's sophomore effort most definitely is not.
03/06/08
I hope Kelly's career survives Southland Tales, unless, that is, he plans to make more movies like this.
01/10/08
They've left it late, but writer-director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) and his team have gone and scooped The Independent's Worst Film of 2007 award – against stiff competition, too.
12/07/07
Top Critic
Whether this is a demented B-movie or a comment on demented B-movies is hard to say. It is horribly fascinating, if not for the full 150 minutes.
12/07/07
The film has a dated feel – it has more in common with 1960s-style wacky satire than the cutting edge of 21st-century cinema.
12/07/07
Top Critic
A hypnotic disaster that's truly fascinating - if only for all the wrong reasons.
12/07/07
Southland Tales finally emerges as an admirably bold dud. Trying to sum up EVERYTHING that’s wrong in the world in one kaleidoscopic go, it’s messy, misshapen and curiously muffled. Seems the world does end with a whimper after all.
12/07/07
By the climax, his truly ambitious, truly flawed film finally disappears into the ‘time-space rift’ (or whatever) to achieve some sort of cosmic transcendence.
12/07/07
A bold and sometimes garbled take on modern American politics, this nevertheless marks an effective and surprisingly funny comeback for a film that many deemed to be DOA.
12/07/07
Top Critic
No doubt some will dismiss it as an overlong, incoherent mess, but others (myself included) will emerge, bleary-eyed and brain-battered, just wanting to see the whole thing all over again.
12/06/07
If Mulholland Drive had a prettier, younger, and developmentally-challenged sister, it would be Southland Tales.
12/02/07
Richard Kelly's 'Southland Tales' Looms as rude, Confrontational Political Black Comedy about a Very Messed-Up, Dystrophian America - a Film with the Vigor and Incorrigible Quality of a Work-In-Progress.
12/01/07
Southland Tales really is a guy movie, right down to all the sci-fi, comic book and porn references...
11/28/07
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