Southland Tales
|
List Price: Our Price: $15.99 You Save: $3.95 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $3.13 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Southland Tales
Movie 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.
Movie Review: But what does it all mean?
Summary: 2 Stars
Set in post-nuclear Southern California (the Southlands), this film tells the stories of a number of different characters - in particular, amnesiac actor Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Geller), and twin police officers Roland and Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) - with the actions of all of these characters ultimately leading to the grand finale of the end of the world.
Many of the elements of this film will be familiar to those who have already seen "Donnie Darko"; once again Kelly deals with time travel, politics and the apocalypse. However, he did a lot better job of dealing with them in his first film. As many other reviewers have pointed out, "Southland Tales" is barely coherent. The individual scenes within the film aren't actually all that bad , and I enjoyed many of them while I was watching this film (the scene in which Justin Timberlake drunkenly lipsyncs his way through "All These Things That I've Done" made the film worth my time), but together a lot of it really doesn't make all that much sense. Some of what is going on is explained in the final half-hour of the film, and I was pretty proud of myself for being able to explain 75% of the plot. Nevertheless, I haven't the faintest idea what any of it means - although, for the record, that didn't actually bother me all that much. I did like this film, I just don't think it's great and I didn't like it enough to rewatch it in order to understand it better.
"Southland Tales" is worth watching once, if you happen to be a Richard Kelly fan, or a fan of one of the multitude of big name actors in this film (it still puzzles me how Kelly managed to convince so many top actors to appear in this film - even if you like it, you would have to agree that it's not exactly mainstream), and your expectations aren't too high. However, it's probably best to rent this one first and see if you like it, before you hand over the chunk of your hard-earned cash necessary to become the proud owner of this film on DVD.
Movie Review: Very strange movie. Like a true Philip K. Dick adaptation.
Summary: 5 Stars
If you read Philip K. Dick, you know that there's a big difference between Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik or The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and the kind of movies that get made out of Philip K. Dick stories and novels (Blade Runner (Five-Disc Complete Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray] and Minority Report (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition) for example.) The heroes are just a little too heroic. The questions are just a little too easy to assimilate. The endings are...well, they actually have satisfactory endings. Love reading Philip K. Dick but I can count on one hand the number of times when I actually felt a book had an ending instead of just stopping somewhere after trying to wrestle the last 3 remaining plot threads into submission.
In the case of this movie, there's Philip K. Dick written all over it. Conspiracies within conspiracies. Everyone is on one side or the other and everyone is a double agent. Time travel is an excuse to mess up things. Coincidence happens but to no one's benefit and at the end most viewers are left with a "what? What was that?" That's not to say that it's not an enjoyable movie. It's just a movie that's endlessly looping and confusing. If you are a Philip K. Dick fan, it's the movie for you. If you aren't, then you might want to look elsewhere. But it is the one movie that really gets the Philip K. Dick universe right. The conspiracies are confusing. The people are more pathetic than evil. Even the big evil Big Brother company is run by morons and leches. And the heroic counterculture types are almost as scary. This has a great place in my heart as I once wrote a 40 page paper slamming on Dystopian fiction (Swastika Night being the worst offender) as didactic and not true to the human experience, contrasting it to The Man in the High Castle in which everything is awful, but no one is all seeing and all knowing.
Either way, it's a confusing mess of a movie. If that's not your thing, avoid. If you want to see something weird and different, by all means, check it out. And then for discussion question, extrapolate on why Justin Timberlake keeps taking these freaky roles.
Movie Review: What do you even do with this movie?
Summary: 3 Stars
Southland Tales is such a bizarre, gonzo trip into dystopic apocolypse lunatic comedy-musical-sci-fi-stoner-headtrip-thriller land, it seems beside the point to even try and register it as good or bad. The flaws are evident and intetional - most of the time, I'm fairly convinced the movie dares you to even try to like it. I'll try and make as quick of a synopsis of the plot as I can make - there was a nuclear attack in Texas, the world's at war, we're out of oil, there's a solution but it might throw the earth off its axis a bit and it's spearheaded by a crazy-looking freak played by Wallace Shawn who has a fondness for TV ads involving cars having sex (seriously). Also, there's the Boxing/movie star hunk who's the son-in-law of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate who's got amnesia and is shacking up with a porn superstar who's vaguely connected to a group of marxist rebels attempting to dissuade a congressional vote on... something... and also Seann William Scott is an infiltrating set of identical twins... who's also doing something. Oh, and Justin Timberlake narrates with cryptic quotes from the Book of Revelations. So, to put it mildly, the movie's plot is excessive, tough to swallow, and teeters back and forth from being completely over the top and just-sorta acceptable. And the casting - from The Rock, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poehler, Mandy Moore, Nora Dunn, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and John Larroquette in main roles - is even more ridiculous. Still, with so much easy to dismiss the movie, it's hard to say it doesn't have drive, and just when the movie veers over the cliff, a scene of extraordinary humor or emotion pops up and surprises you. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nora Dunn in particular are given scenes of just outrageous lines (says Gellar on her hot-topic porn talk show, "Violence is a big problem in today's society. That's the primary reason I won't do anal"), and their scenes are viciously entertaining. One extraordinary over the top scene finds Gellar, The Rock, and Moore trading one-ups in something that's like a soap opera gone drug-addled. And the scene to truly savor is the weirdest - a music video in an arcade hall in which Justin Timberlake's wounded, crazy drug addict war hero lipsynchs and parties to The Killer's "All These Things That I've Done." That scene takes the movie's drug-trip kitsch and makes it electrifying, letting Timberlake's scarred face and dark, desperate eyes somehow reveal a life within the confines of a crazy dance number. Such an aberration, it electrifies the movie around it as it veers away from rational explanation and silliness and back again in its 2 1/2 hours. I'd say this movie - ridiculous and wonderful in spurts - clocks in somewhere over the 50% mark, making the rewards slightly greater than the work you have to do to put up with the movie.Movie Review: GARBAGE. Please watch anything except this movie!
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this as a used DVD for $5. That was $5 too much for this piece of garbage. This movie is inane. The script would have been infinitely better if words were chosen at random from the dictionary.
Please be very careful of anyone who rates this higher than 1 star. They need to be drug tested.
Have you ever watched a movie and it reminded you of 2 or 3 other movies? This movie falls into that category. This movie reminded me of at least 20 other movies. The Top 3 being "A Clockwork Orange", "The Magic Christian" and "Timecop." Those three movies are infinitely better than this movie. Please watch those movies if you want to watch a good movie.
One of the posted reviews compares this movie to "Brazil." That is an insult to "Brazil." Other reviewers said it contains great symbolism. Great symbolism does NOT mean a great movie. This movie is proof of that. Technically speaking, a 90 minute montage of swastikas is great symbolism too, but I do not want to watch that either. If you want truly great symbolism, please watch Pink Floyd's movie "The Wall."
Justin Timberlake is in this movie. I am so sick of seeing him in movies. I refuse to see any future movies in which he is a cast member. It is a shame that Heath Ledger passed away and Justin Timberlake is still with us.
This movie had one redeeming scene that prevented me from tossing out the DVD. That is the scene where Cheri Oteri beats up an arms dealer. I LOVED that scene. I am a big fan of Cheri Oteri. I will always look forward to seeing her in a movie.
I also expected much better from Dwayne Johnson. This is the only movie of his that has disappointed me.
I flat out refuse to watch any movies from the guy who directed this phenominal waste of money. Hollywood should get together and throw this guy out of Hollywood.
Unless you enjoy wasting time that you can never recover, please avoid this DVD. Treat it as if it were toxic to the touch. You will be much better off.