Richard Kelly, the director of the cult film Donnie Darko, is finally ready for a wide release for his next film, and I don't envy him. Anticipation is high and there's almost no way to meet it. Donnie Darko created a rabid cult of fan boys (which I am admittedly one of) and they will be hard to please. Unfortunately, I think for most people, Southland Tales is going to fail to meet their expectations.

This is going to be the film that pisses off people the most this year. I guarantee it. There's not just one way to review this film. There's the way the 95% of you are going to feel about it...you're going to absolutely hate it and will probably turn it off half way through. You wouldn't be wrong for feeling that way either. This movie was not made for you. Then there's that other five percent who it was made for. Half of that five will really enjoy it for what it is and the other half will REALLY enjoy it for what it is and will go completely Viggo Mortensen nuts-out for it, will start up websites and chat groups, have regular meetings and conventions...you get the idea.

The story...how to even begin? It's a sprawling network of interconnected character arcs through a dystopian near-future and is really hard to nail down a starting point for it.Two Texas cities have been destroyed by nuclear weapons. Bush remains president as a "war-time act". The patriot act has become it's own agency called US-Indent which has put tight controls on the internet and now uses fingerprints in order for people to access computers or their bank accounts. We're all but out of fossil fuels and the war in Iraq continues but is going very badly for us. In short, things are frakked up in a convincingly conceivable way.

A big company called Treer has built a giant machine called Fluid Karma that gets an endless amount of energy from the ocean's currents and consequently have all but taken over the American political system with their new-found power. What no one realizes is that the machine has ripped a hole into the fourth dimension and is causing the Earth's rotation to slow down making things weird. Various people are addicted to a drug by-product of the Fluid Karma process, and it seems clear to a lot of people that final Armageddon is at hand. As the movie keeps repeatedly telling us, "The world ends not with a whimper, but a bang." At least, I think that's whats going on. Something along those lines.

Meanwhile, a famous athelete/actor Boxer Santoros

is found out in the desert with no memory of his past and with an unidentifiable dead body in his car by drug dealer/gambling addict Fortunio Balducci (Will Sasso) who brings him to the attention of porn star/self-promoting entrepreneur/prophetess Krista Now.

(damn!) Krista also works for an anti-US-Ident group called the Neo-Marxists and she realizes that having access to a brain-wiped Boxer, who unknown to him is married to the daughter of a prominent Republican senator with US-Ident ties, could be very advantageous to the cause, which in turn could be helpful to her career. She convinces Boxer that they are lovers and that they wrote a screenplay together called "The Power" which is about the end of the world and is actually a prophecy written by Krista who herself is unaware of her new abilities. The Treer corporation on the other hand, IS aware of her ability and is monitoring the situation carefully to see what happens.

Also going on is Roland Tavener/Ronald Tavener

One is a cop (seen tied to a chair here) and one is his twin brother, an actor who also has a mysterious desert-related case of amnesia and who is being used by the Neo-Marxists to pretend to be his twin. He is sent out with Boxer who is doing a ride-along with a police officer in order to research his role in "The Power" but the goal is to fake a shooting of a black man and make it look like police racism so that Boxer will take his story to the press.

All this is about 1/4 of the beginning premise. Just the premise. There are so many damn characters in here I've had easier times trying to remember all the girls who I tried and failed to have sex with. Here's a brief list of prominently featured actors in the film: The Rock, Sean William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Holmes Osbourne, Will Sasso, Miranda Richardson, Jon Lovitz, Kevin Smith, Wallace Shawn, Beth Grant, John Larroquette, Nora Dunn, Amy Poehler, Justin Timberlake, Ling Bai, Curtis Armstrong, Rebekah Del Rio, Janeane Garolfalo (who's part was all but cut out), Christopher Lambert...that's not even counting some silly cameos that appear for a moment here and there like seeing Eli Roth get shot to death on a toilet, and tons more actors who aren't as well known.

So get on with it, right? Did I like it or not? I had to think about this a lot. First off, it did keep me interested while watching it. With it's never ending cavalcade of famous faces alone, it draws attention. But that doesn't make it a good film. With it's odd casting of comedic actors in serious roles it keeps you watching. But that doesn't make it a good film. With it's bizarre Byzantinian story that never stops branching in new directions it keeps you watching. But that doesn't...well, actually that is part of what might make it a good film.

WARNING: FILM STUDENT COFFEE HOUSE TYPE ARGUMENTS AHEAD

One really needs to redefine what a good film is to go with this logic path. Is Star Wars a good film in the same way that Mulholland Drive is a good film? Is the Godfather a good film in the same way that Un Chien Andalou is a good film? Well obviously not, so maybe the definitions we have here don't have to be limited to films that give an immediate positive reaction or a clear narrative structure. I mean, film is supposed to be an art form and art by it's very nature is supposed to draw outside the lines. But then, when something lies outside of our experience, our previously established rule structures, how are we supposed to accurately judge it except to notice that it occurs outside of these rules? This is the crux of my problem with deciding how to feel about Southland Tales.

The movie covers so much ground, is so wildly ambitious, optimistic and just plain enthusiastic in its attempt to say something in a different way using the film medium that I can't help but admire it on that basis alone. I wish on a daily basis that the rest of Hollywood had even a tenth of the balls that Richard Kelly has as a creator. Southland Tales will almost certainly show why these money men have no balls, but who needs huevos when you have a ridiculously huge bank account? While terrible films like Dumb and Dumberer will make a profit regardless of their shoe scrapings level of quality, original art in the film world remains and will continue to remain a staple of the indie theaters and no amount of special effects or big names will change that anytime soon.

So finally once again back to the question, did I like it? I'm tempted to not answer that just to be a complete ass, but I will anyway. Yeah, I did. It took awhile of thinking about it and I read the graphic novel prequels that the Richard Kelly brought along with him to the screening for us to have and I checked out the multiple related websites out there and taken as a complete work, it's actually a pretty fascinating and entertaining work if you're willing to put in some work yourself as an audience member.

I can't help but feel that the pop art element that lies on top of his work, the casting of so many famous faces in unexpected roles and the placement of lyrics of songs as dialogue, actually distracts from the point here but does help you get through the first viewing of the film. The problem there is that although everyone tries really hard to play their parts convincingly, it was hard to keep from expecting things to drastically take a turn for the comedic or silly. Jon Lovitz especially as a hard-nosed racist cop was hard to get used to. Just try saying that out loud and picturing it in your head and you'll see what I mean.

Many related ideas and imagery find their way over from Donnie Darko but are treated so differently that any comparison between the two films outside of the score (which is by Moby and has a similar creepy, atmospheric feel) is vague at best. Perhaps there are more answers about the strange inter-dimensionality of Donnie's world hidden here, but I suspect that Richard Kelly just likes using dimensional theory the way Star Trek writers like blaming things on tachyon particles.

Kelly's sometimes grotesque sense of humor, commentary on current world and social politics, and conspiratorial tone recalls nothing so much as Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's much celebrated (and criticized) cult underground tome, The Illuminatus Trilogy. The fans of this sort of labyrinth writing and meta-humor will find Southland Tales to be the film they have been waiting for their whole lives. Almost everyone else, even most of the fans of Donnie Darko, will find it to be the Ishtar of cult movies.

Included here are the sub-par quality videos I took of the Q & A with Richard Kelly after the movie.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part six and seven I ran out of time to upload today, so I'll put them up on the videos page later tonight if you're interested.