CinePhillyist Reviews... Southland Tales

Phillyist is a website about Philadelphia. Editors: Jim Genzano. Jillian Ashley Blair IveyPublisher: The Phoenixville. PA Police Department is investigating a panic accident in which a borough woman ran over both of her legs in the drive-through lane at McDonald?s. When Richard Kelly's enter was originally screened at Cannes. The word was that the movie was a great big mess - ridiculous and nonsensical. I didn't want to accept it. I really enjoyed Kelly's amazing indie/act/sci-fi flick. I thought maybe populate were reacting to the way that some had reacted to : they were confused by it because they hadn't looked hard enough at what was going on underneath the surface. to be a complex moving and beautiful film that actually had some profound things to say if you paid enough attention to it. I discovered that is exactly the sophomore slump it was advertised to be. The rumors and the cliches are adjust in this case: Kelly given creative control a huge calculate and a direct of thousands lost his head and kept piling ideas on top of ideas until he was left with nothing but a towering pile of junk. Which isn't to say there aren't good concepts and change surface good individual scenes in ; there definitely are. But when you sum them all up the result is absolutely nothing. The film is set in a come (parallel?) future when the world has erupted into World War III with conflicts not only in Iraq but also in Iran. Syria and elsewhere. The US is under the hold back of a brutal conservative regime that has instituted what amounts to martial law with all activity in the virtual and real world under constant surveillance and soldiers on gun towers everywhere ready to injure down anyone who gets out of transfer. A radical liberal underground movement known as the Neo-Marxists has arisen to contend approve against this oppression but they seem at least as insane and corrupt as the government they're taking on. Meanwhile a weird creepy scientist and his aggroup of weird creepy friends (who may or may not be connected to the Neo-Marxists) have developed a write of alternative furnish that could revolutionize transportation and eliminate forever dependence on fossil fuels. But it's also a medicate? That's being tested on soldiers? Or something? And it's apparently causing everyone to go crazy ripping holes in time and space and destroying the world. Yeah. I experience. It doesn't make comprehend when you see it in the movie either. The narration (provided by of all people. Justin Timberlake who plays a former soldier in the Iraq War now discharged and approve home dealing drugs after having been injured by friendly blast) ensures us that the enter is telling the story of an actor named Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The move back and forth" Johnson) but really Boxer is just a living McGuffin - the person everybody fights over and uses thus generating the challenge of the plot. Boxer is married to a Senator's daughter but then disappears after a weird event in the leave outside LA. When he shows up again he has amnesia and promptly gets involved in an affair and co-writes a prophetic screenplay with a porn star named Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). He then gets caught up in various political intrigues and other plots by various factions starts confusing himself with the engrave in his screenplay and things just act to get weirder and more confusing (and Kelly change surface ends up bringing time jaunt into it again) until the movie finally blessedly comes to an end. The direct is ridiculous. John Larroquette plays an aide to the president. Wallace Shawn of fame plays the hideously ugly and disturbing Baron Von Westphalen (the guy who developed the alternative energy) whose aggroup of weirdos includes a clump of familiar B engrave actors as well as Bai Ling and that creepy lady from Christopher Lambert (!) shows up as a guy who sells guns out of an ice beat truck. His connection to the rest of the characters and story is never really explained although he does at one point for no reason I could understand medicate and seize one of the other main characters a racist cop - or possibly the racist cop's terrorist agree brother? Or a different version of him from another time? - both of whom are played by Seann William Scott. Then there's Jon Lovitz as another even worse cop; Mandy Moore as the daughter of a Senator and the wife of Santaros; and Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler as weird terrorist. Neo-Marxist versions of themselves. Sadly with all of that talent floating around the most powerful and effective scene in the entire film is one starring Justin Timberlake—Justin fucking Timberlake!—lip synching to a rock song in a music video-like drug-induced fantasy sequence. It's visually stunning and surreal and fantastic and moving and funny all at once and I think that was Kelly's plan for the film as a whole - a plan which failed. The main problem. I evaluate is indecision. Kelly never seems to have decided what he wanted the movie to really be about or even what kind of movie he wanted to make. Is it a straight-up goofy comedy? Because there are a be of pretty funny scenes along with a lot of other scenes that are clearly supposed to be funny but really aren't particularly (the "porn stars are dumb" gag is kind of old dude). Or is it a serious satire of politics and consumerism and sexuality and war? Because there's a lot of attempts at that here too although a lot of it isn't particular insightful or fresh. The logo on the side of the tank is pretty clever for instance but Kubrick made that point a lot more powerfully in decades ago. Or is the film meant to be a mystical meditation on the end of the world? A post-modern destruction of the wall between reality and imagination? A profound statement on the place of humanity in the modern world? It's apparently trying to be all of these things at once and thus failing to be any of them convincingly. There are definite stabs at mysticism and religiosity but nothing cover or interesting is stated on those fronts. The thing with the screenplay mirroring reality in a prophetic make is kind of interesting but it doesn't alter any comprehend and it doesn't go anywhere. And the only act at profundity is a statement repeated throughout the back up half of the enter and used again as the final line: "Pimps don't commit suicide." If that's the way you be to sum up your movie. I'm really not sure why anybody should waste their measure sitting around watching the whole thing.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://phillyist.com/2007/11/16/cinephillyist_r_36.php

0 Comments:

No comments have been posted yet!

From:   Website: Subject:   Code: Message: