Southland Tales (2006)
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Reviews Counted: 94
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 60
Southland Tales, while offering an intriguing vision of the future, remains frustratingly incoherent and unpolished.
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Critic Reviews: 26
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 16
Southland Tales, while offering an intriguing vision of the future, remains frustratingly incoherent and unpolished.
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Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 26,388
Movie Info
California is at the epicenter of a political and environmental disaster that threatens to destroy the world in this ambitious fusion of comedy, drama, dystopian science fiction, and music from writer and director Richard Kelly, his first film after gaining a cult following with Donnie Darko. In the year 2005, a nuclear attack wipes out part of the state of Texas, and three years later America is a virtual police state, with the government taking control of nearly every part of people's lives,
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Cast
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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Boxer Santaros -
Seann William Scott
Roland Taverner/Ronald ... -
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Krysta Kapowski/Krysta ... -
Curtis Armstrong
Dr. Soberin Exx -
Joe Campana
Brandt Huntington -
Nora Dunn
Cyndi Pinziki -
Michele Durrett
Starla Von Luft -
Beth Grant
Dr. Inga Von Westphalen... -
Wood Harris
Dion Warner/Dion Elemen... -
John Larroquette
Vaughn Smallhouse -
Ling Bai
Serpentine -
Jon Lovitz
Bart Bookman -
Mandy Moore
Madeline Frost Santaros -
Holmes Osborne
Senator Bobby Frost -
Cheri Oteri
Zora Charmichaels -
Amy Poehler
Veronica Mung/Dream -
Lou Taylor Pucci
Martin Kefauver -
Miranda Richardson
Nana Mae Frost -
Jill Ritchie
Shoshana Kapowski/Shosh... -
Zelda Rubinstein
Dr. Katarina Kuntzler -
Will Sasso
Fortunio Balducci -
Wallace Shawn
Baron Von Westphalen -
Sab Shimono
Hideo Takehashi -
Kevin Smith
Simon Theory -
Justin Timberlake
Private Pilot Abilene -
Lisa K. Wyatt
Teri Riley -
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All Critics (94) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (60) | DVD (10)
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.
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.
One of the most confusing, ridiculous, pretentious and disastrous cinematic train wrecks I've ever seen.
By the time the movie rolls into its third hour, it's exhausted most of its comic energy, leaving you disoriented and unable to remember much of what you just saw.
Immature, crude, poorly made and a waste of time.
No amount of reworking could salvage what was a misbegotten and unfunny idea to begin with.
Unusual and extremely ambitious with an alternate reality that is entirely absorbing; Southland Tales is Richard Kelly's magnum opus that only a small few are able to recognize. Thankfully, those small few are pimps. And pimps don't commit suicide.
Not much improvement over the vfirst, severely flawed version.
The brilliance of Southland Tales is inextricable from its flaws, if indeed they are flaws.
Has the galvanic pulse of a filmmaker trying things out, failing, and trying again
It's the sort of experience you feel embarrassed about even though you had nothing to do with it, because it's not just a mess, it's a pretentious mess
This is not just another hodgepodge of a movie that's all noise and excess; writer/ director Richard Kelly has a point here; he has plenty to say.
The type of incoherent, indulgent muddle that can only emerge from the mind of someone who is quite talented.
I'll give it this: Southland Tales is never boring.
entirely misdirected, and the film never gels or even makes sense
Although it's by any reasonable means a flawed film, Southland Tales demands watching, if only for its cinematic achievements.
Sets up such a pretense of intellectualism it fools its audience into believing it's on a plain they can't understand...
A subversive and annihilistic satire on America, lurching from black comedy to farce, from dramatic insight to superficial jokes
When it's not being obstinately stupid, Southland Tales is just difficult to watch.
While Donnie Darko is a fine film regardless of your level of sobriety, Richard Kelly's sophomore effort most definitely is not.
I hope Kelly's career survives Southland Tales, unless, that is, he plans to make more movies like this.
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.
Frustrating and finally rather pointless.
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.
The film has a dated feel - it has more in common with 1960s-style wacky satire than the cutting edge of 21st-century cinema.
A hypnotic disaster that's truly fascinating - if only for all the wrong reasons.
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November 29, 2010:
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