Two Very Different Reviews For SOUTHLAND TALES!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. Well, we’re just around the corner now from the release of SOUTHLAND TALES, and I fully expect epic bouts of name-calling to commence immediately. This is the type of film where people won’t just disagree about the movie... they will feel required to attack anyone who feels differently than they do, where people will scream at each other about it, and where friendships will end over it. It’s that polarizing a picture. I’ll have my own review of it up soon, but for now, I’ll kick things off with a guy who liked it just a li’l bit...

NAME of WRITER: DAVID STANLEY THE PORN DIRECTOR LOCATION: HOLLYWOOD MOVIE: SOUTHLAND TALES SEEN: @AFI Fest, 2007. What the fuck is wrong with critics? okay, first off. Southland Tales is brilliant in about a million different ways at once. A passionate, complicated, beautiful, hilarious - but most importantly - VISIONARY work of post modern, pop culture savvy, film ART. the shit that this movie has taken astounds me to no end. this is a movie that - since it's premiere (in unfinished form) at the cannes film festival a few years back - has been run out of town on so many rails it could call itself the Great Northern. it's an amazing, amazing movie. from first frame to last it succeeds in what it's doing. but, apparently, what it's doing isn't something that a lot of film critics want done. why has this movie taken such an unfair drumming in the press? is it just a great big bandwagon that the critics are afraid NOT to jump on? amy taubin and j. hoberman got it. and they got it back at cannes. before richard kelly had a chance to tighten the thing up and finish the effects. amy taubin and j. hoberman are two highly regarded, fairly iconoclastic, New York film critics. amy taubin was one of the very few critics to champion "eyes wide shut" when that came out, even going so far as to quit the publication she was writing for when they didn't agree with her estimation of what has turned out to be one of Kubrick's best films. (watch it NOW. you'll agree.) hoberman is a critic who, i believe, is primarily known for not cow-towing to common opinion. and by liking "southland tales" (it was so good i wanted to rip a hole in the screen, stick my dick in it and come like a water park ride) hoberman has certainly distanced himself from the status quo. and thank God. because a film like this - and like a lot of Kubrick's work - is definitely not something that can make a single, slim gilder at the box office without the critics on it's side. which is why - sad to say, in this age of remakes and otherwise shitty, derivative flicks - "Southland Tales" won't make any money. and because it won't, the chance of making other movies like it will diminish down to a skinny drizzle. this sucks balls. and the reason it sucks balls is because we are FUCKING CRAVING great art. now, more than ever. we need it. it's the only thing that keeps us sane. okay, maybe not "all" of us. but the ones of us who are not anesthetized. the ones who are awake. those of us who exist - in great masses, i believe, however silent and therefore powerless in this alpha dog culture - who LIVE for great movies and great music and great photography and great paintings - because it MAKES LIFE BEARABLE - should not be cheated on the art out there that DOES exist, but which the FASCIST PIGS (!) would rather leave in the desert like a amnesiatic action movie star. I myself REFUSE to stand by and watch movies like "Southland Tales" be birthed stillborn before they're even released. We need a movie like this to succeed. Why? Because it has balls. It's daring. It's smart and multi-layered. And it - again, like Kubrick movies (read what the critics had to say about "2001" when THAT was released, they hated it) - will undoubtedly grow better and richer every time i see it. that i can guarantee. it is a phantasmagoria of ideas. all of them seemingly disparate if you have the attention of a bumblebee. but if you LOOK at the thing, there's a million beautiful pieces. if you STAND BACK from it, you easily see that it's all of one. one singular vision. one singular, dazzling thing. like justin timberlake tripping balls and singing about bad things that he has done in a skee ball arcade in venice while beautiful girls from another era dance and smile as he pours beer on his head and looks like his pain could cut him in two. (this is just one shot from the movie. there's plenty more . . .) there is nothing like it. you can compare it to other great movies. all similarly decimated in the trades upon release. movies like BLADE RUNNER and 2001 and EYES WIDE SHUT and DAYS OF HEAVEN. i'm not saying that it's as great as those that go aforementioned, but i will say that it's really fucking good. now what constiutes as "really fucking good?" for me, it's the buzz of the thing. and i don't mean the hype type of "buzz." God, no. i mean, the feeling i get when i watch the thing. anyone who truly loves movies - and there are a lot of you out there, by God - knows this feeling that i'm referring to. it's a full body thing. the movie is stroking some part of your brain. the part that can leave and go anywhere it wants to. let's just cut to the quick, shall we? movies are inter dimensional travel. they fucking are. we sit in a dark room and a dream unfolds before us and we enfold within it. when it's GOOD. when a movie sucks balls (Tranformers 2:Electric Boogaloo, Paul Haggis' Crash) you don't go anywhere. you don't travel. you just sit in the theater, getting your seat kicked and trying to keep your feet from falling asleep. (i usually think about sandwiches i'm interested in eating.) but when a movie is good, you travel well. the skies get friendly, oh my Brothers. and you float just like Pennywise said you would. oh, how you float. southland tales gave me the floaty feeling. the buzz i like. and it gave me in in spades. i could tick off everything i like about it, but i won't. you should see for yourself. as the guy who introduced the film at the Arclight said, "no matter what you heard about this movie, i promise you it will be a surprise." part of me wanted to hate it. because liking it will just be more proof that, as far as public opinion goes, i'm farther off the grid than is comfortable. but so be it. i'm pissed at the grid. it owes me money and it won't return my texts. so i say - with fantastic aplomb and amazing grace - fuck the critics. Fuck 'em for trying to stillbirth "Southland Tales" before it even got out of the gate. it will be released on November 16th. in "select cities" of course. but it's a great film. if you don't like it, i'll come in a cup.

Well, then. I find it fascinating how defensive and angry that is, and how little he says about the film itself. I suspect there’s a reason for that. If ambition was all it took, SOUTHLAND TALES would be this year’s greatest film. If the desire for greatness was the same as greatness, SOUTHLAND TALES would be everything that guy above says it is and then some. I’m guessing most people will feel a little bit more like this next guy, who doesn’t seem to feel the same need to shit on everyone pre-emptively in his explanation of his reaction to the film...

Drew, "Southland Tales" screened Friday night and Saturday afternoon at the AFI Film Festival in Hollywood, and while I'm sure you'll get a couple of reviews, I thought I'd share my thoughts. I'm a 34-year-old novelist who loves "Donnie Darko", but had low expectations for Richard Kelly's follow-up based on its negative publicity for the last two years. That said, I went in wanting to like the film. If I can sum "Southland Tales" up in one word, it would be this: "Dune". While there are fans of David Lynch's "Dune" and those who still sign off on it, saying "Yeah, it's all right. It's okay. At least it's different", both that film and "Southland Tales" are 2 1/2 hour long sci-fi/comedies, needlessly convoluted, filled with questionable B-actors and iffy special effects. And at the end of the day I don't know what the fuck either one is about. The good: * The prologue - depicting nuclear attacks in Abilene and El Paso as shot on home video - is pretty potent. The only intriguing geopolitical stuff in the film are the glimpses we catch on newscasts of how World War III - a U.S. counterattack on Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Syria - is progressing. That was believable, as well as a bit unraveling. * Some of the performances. Dwayne Johnson has a charisma I liked; he's fun to watch in this and I will say it, a good actor. Cheri Oteri is terrific as a dreadlocked revolutionary. And while she's on screen maybe 4 minutes, Mandy Moore again proves she's a good comedienne. * Some of the music. Moby is credited with the score and seems like a good choice for your apocalyptic L.A. movie. As with "Donnie Darko", Kelly demonstrates a real flair for music video, even though I think his forays into choreography hurt this movie instead of helping it. The bad: * The entire film - start to finish - is needlessly convoluted. The political material bogs the movie down and kills it, just absolutely kills it. Just like "Dune", where you need a scorecard to keep track of the various houses or spice guilds or whatever the fuck – here we've got Neo-Marxists, a Republican senator, his aides, his power hungry wife. Bush is glimpsed on video (I guess as the current president) and Carl Rove has his own franchise of banks. Veterans are returning from Iraq, but it's not clear if they're part of the police state, or against it. There's an alternative energy genius played by Wallace Shawn as a cross between Robert Oppenheimer and Andy Warhol that I wasn't sure was good or evil. Sarah Michelle Gellar spoofs Paris Hilton fairly well, but it wasn't clear whether she was a femme fatale or our heroine. Was I supposed to be afraid of her, or are porn stars our 21st century heroes? I'm getting a headache just typing this shit. * Poor casting. In "Donnie Darko" we had Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wylie and Drew Barrymore. Great casting. I can't make heads or tails out of most of the people Kelly cast in this thing. Nora Dunn plays a revolutionary. Jon Lovitz an evil cop. Amy Poehler another revolutionary. Laraine Newman must be upset she didn't get a reading. Every time someone from "SNL" shows up, the audience started chuckling. Oteri is good, but this casting is just bizarre and took me right out of the movie. * If anything brings a movie to a halt like politics, it might be the Internet. Way too much of the plot revolves around the Internet. Who's broadcasting what on the Internet. Who's watching who on the Internet. None of that is cinematic, and it's not the least bit interesting. * There needs to a limit of three Bible verses per movie. That's it. Even three per movie is pushing it. Every other piece of narration by Justin Timberlake is out of the Book of Revelations. It's just too much, Kelly vaporizes the audience. * "Southland Tales" is not a good title. There are no multiple storylines going on here. No "tales", just vignettes or bits. It's about as episodic as "1941". To sum up, the movie isn't tense or unnerving enough to be a thriller. It isn't funny, so it's not a comedy. It becomes gradually ridiculous and completely abandons reality, so it's not a satire. What the fuck is this? Timberlake's narration riffs on "Apocalypse Now", but that film had a very concise story. Willard is headed up the river to kill Kurtz. I cannot begin to unravel who was going where or why in this movie. In the elevator, I heard a teenager saying that nobody outside of the Southland/L.A. would understand this movie. Uh, I live here and don't fucking understand this movie. The producers deserve most of the blame. Richard Kelly is talented, but someone should have had the sophistication and intelligence and yeah, balls, to tell him that his script needed work. A lot more work. So, if you love "Dune", you might appreciate "Southland Tales". I don't know Richard Kelly, but have a feeling that like David Lynch, he'll want to move on to his "Blue Velvet" and forget this movie ever happened. You can call me "Laszlo Vilsay."