Southland Tales

What an absolutely ingenious mess of a film! Even at 2hrs 25 mins, it’s still too short. It’s obvious that writer/director Richard Kelly had to edit a lot out. I’d love to see a 4 hour cut of the film because there’s just so much stuff going on that needs more time to develop. But ultimately this is the version that we get to see and we have to make do with it.

Even though you can see through to the brilliant ambition of the project and the underlying genius, you can’t get away from the fact that it just doesn’t all hang together well as a film. David Lynch knows what he’s doing with films like Mulholland Dr. but perhaps Richard Kelly wasn’t quite ready to do something like this. However there’s still so much to like about it: Moby’s score and the great use of music, the pervading dark sense of humour, the inspired casting. I imagine that even the casting choices were part of the message of the film. Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a porn star is one of my favourite things ever in cinematic history!

Southland Tales wasn’t quite the follow-up to Donnie Darko that most of us were expecting but I’m sure that Richard Kelly still has a big future and I look forward to whatever else he comes up with. 5 crumbs out of 10.

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