Oh yeah, Southland Tales deserves it's own thread...

[Pedro_Bear]

We have just watched a two hour twenty four minute piss take of anything and everything the last two decades has thrown at us entertainment-wise from the USA, including the concept of meta-piss taking films that use the medium as the message.

I don't know how I feel about this yet, but I can confirm we were giggling all the way through, and then cracked up and laughed like mad people during the end credits, which we are pretty sure was the point of the thing.

The film is called Southland Tales. It defies description, which is quite deliberate on its part. It winds the audience up at every turn, but then gives us just enough to keep us going through the marathon timeslot.

The acting, if we can call it that, is just passable, but deliberately so. The main cast have been chosen because of their star names and their lack of ability to act, and then seemingly mis-directed to maximise their woodeness. Now, I appreciate that this paragraph could also be due to piss poor direction, which, under normal circumstances, I'd agree with. Yet Southland Tales has to be seen to appreciate the focus of the satire being pulled off. This film quite specifically draws attention to how thin the layer of stardust is on just about every film we're conned out of money to go see. The plot, if it has one, is deliberately opaque, hinting at tired Christian themes of redemption in the face of The Apocalypse, tinted with toothless commentary about the War On Terror and Homeland Security, wafer-thin schoolkid-level socialism vs capitalism, and then splashed all over with science babble and the ubiquitous time travel deus ex horseshit so very beloved by so-called indie cinema... and then... it's all s-p-e-l-t out in the dialogue as if we were children, and in the event turns out to amount to exactly the sum of fuck all. Fuck you for watching this film. Fuck you for watching any of these films. What are you, stupid? Why do you keep watching this Hollywood shit? Ooh The Rock and Buffy are in this film... that was two big fucking clues to stay the fuck away, moron.

The time travel hook is what gels the joke together, and if any more confirmation were needed that this film is indeed a meta-satire, we need only look at the writer/director's debut, the surprise indie- hit- with- the- demographic- Hollywood- covets, Donnie Darko. Very obviously he pitched Southland Tales by slyly opening his mouth and saying "It's about time travel, and I want the biggest MTV demographic names to star in this, my first Hollywood movie..." and the studio gave him a blank cheque on the spot. And he took that cheque and wiped his arse with it. Yet what a celluloid stain he created. Southland Tales rubs into our faces all the very worst tricks of contemporary Hollywood, even managing to take a swipe at pseudo-musicals at one point, whilst simultaneously daring any smart-arsed film blogger review to use the term Big Lipped Alligator Moment. Oh yeah, he's fucking with the likes of us too, genre-savvy bullshitters with too much spare time on our hands.

People get shot in exciting gunfights, shit blows up. The film starts out with a nuke in a suburb filmed by shakycam kid-with-a-camcorder for fuckssake. This is cinematic gold, goddammit. Quotes from Revelations are all the voice over ever bangs on about. There's a mystery to be solved care of amnesia, military combat drugs mixed with Tesla free energy tech humming in the background. Everyone appears to be a double, double agent. There's shit talked about terrorism. There's on-message The Internet Is Evil And Must Be Controlled cine-meme. There's pornstars all over the place although no actual sexual content at all. The film is labelled episodes IV to VI, like we're going to rush out and buy the ficticious comic book prequels of episodes I to III, and on and on, relentlessly churning Hollywood Blockbuster bullshit of a dismal, dire double-decade into this goo.

King Shit of Turd Mountain is Dwanye Johnson, in on the joke in a way you don't really get the feeling half of the rest of the ensemble are. Why I still underestimate The Rock given his background in the most lucrative US entertainment enterprise of the 1990's is down to how very good he is at not laughing out loud at the absurdity of what is going on around him. His perfect, white-toothed "I have no idea what the fuck is happening, but the show must go on" grin and ludicrous overactingare constant pleasures in this film.

It flags itself all the way through, it really isn't trying to be subtle about what it is. The reviewers who took it seriously should all be fired on the spot, they are part of the problem of diminishing returns in contemporary cinema. Firing monkeys from a cannon into a time vortex is the least of the obvious clues handed to them on a plate. Come on, how big does a joke have to be drawn? Miranda Richardson's hair ffs.

Fuck off Chen.

So... yeah. Southland Tales, a film about the state of Hollywood, and why we shouldn't pay them any more money until they promise never to make a film with these elements in it ever again. Clever, arrogant, and cunty. It earns a special slot in my top ten fims, being the only one I wouldn't want to have to watch again. And that's the point of it.



Fuck off Chen, I'm trying to type. What's that, Chen? No, you're just being silly. No fucking way. Written before 9/11, you say? The shit about TWAT and alternative energy bolted on afterwards, you say? Not a satire?! That's preposterous Chen, you've been at the catnip again. No I don't wikipedia or watch any interviews with the writer/director, why would I do that with my life? What early edit?

No. Shut up Chen. Because this, you stupid flea magnet: if what you are flapping about is true, then that means Southland Tales is the very worst film made in twenty years, and by extension, possibly ever. That means The Phantom Menace had merit, Chen. That means we were wrong to bully the wageslaves at the Odeon until they gave us our money back for walking out of Underworld, Chen. That means all the obnoxious remakes and plundering of comic books of the past seven years or so were better films, Chen. No, not Star Trek, Chen, the shit ones, ie all of the others. Van Helsing and Constantine are in a different category of Awful Good and you know it, Chen. Clash of the Titans, Chen. Think about it.

Hoisted by my own preoccupation with meta-satire?! Moi? I'll cut you Chen, and feed you to Flan in chunks. Now fuck off. TL;DR? Southland Tales, whatthefuckarewewatching.jpg

[vrailaine]

Can't  be bothered reading that but its a fantastic film, one of the funniest I've ever watched. The Rock is outstandingly funny in it, some amazing timing in his delivery of lines.

[thugler]

It's not a joke. The director is a genuine douche. Watch 'the box' and see it's also full of the same bullshit that clogs this. It's not a joke, it's genuinely bad. An idiot trying to be insanely ambitious and ending up with a stupid overlong mess.

[vrailaine]

It's not a joke. The director is a genuine douche. Watch 'the box' and see it's also full of the same bullshit that clogs this. It's not a joke, it's genuinely bad. An idiot trying to be insanely ambitious and ending up with a stupid overlong mess.

I'm not so sure, the original edit was a lot more serious, and it's just plain horrible. The version which finally came out seems to be going for laughs as a priority.

[Peru]

At no point in his three film career has Richard Kelly shown any ability to make what is anything other than an irritating, sprawling mess. Donnie Darko at least had a couple of decent performances at its core, though the film is absolute nonsense when you pay even vaguely close attention to it. The Box is absolutely dreadful - no sense of its own stupidity and silliness, or the fact that characters having a nosebleed every 3 seconds is ridiculous rather than sinister. Even worse, it throws deliberately nonsensical non-sequiter scenes in that clearly make no sense in order to apparently increase the 'interpretebility' of the fim, despite the actual twist being stupidly revealed in open dialogue about 20 minutes in.

I remember sitting down to watch Southland Tales, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, but I remember a massive intro with text and voiceover that was the most clearly bolted-on thing ever, followed by credits, and then the title card 'Chapter 6'. I almost fell off the sofa laughing - the thing was a disaster already and it hadn't even got past the credits. I'm not going to criticise ambition - the film has plenty of that - but really it's just a load of cool-sounding things bolted together at the expense of any kind of satisfying viewing experience - at its heart, it's as dumb as the next movie.

[Pedro_Bear]

It's a weird one, isn't it? I still don't know how I feel about this film.

It is awful, but in a transcendent, genuinely enjoyable way. It is Not Another Hollywood Blockbuster Movie done properly, in that it's funny all the way through albeit totally contrived and unfocused, more so if taken as a knowing satire of a tired genre.

Yet... all things point to this being accidental?! It's a paradox.

I really want to recommend it to lurkers, but at almost two and a half hours long, it is quite a commitment to make for the sake of a joke. It is not a film that gets better, or in any way resolves, even. Either we're laughing off the bat like it's parody, or we're in for a very slow evening. The ending made us crack up at how "what the fuck was that, that cannot be the ending" it was, but with real laughter because we've made it that far. We weren't even sneering, it was genuinely like a joke being pulled off at our expense by that point, a punchline to round off the rest.

Yet apparently not. The word "ambitious" is generous, isn't it?

[thugler]

Its so definately not a joke, read all the interviews with the director. He thinks he's made a masterpiece. Obviously believed all his own hype after darko and went crazy. There are some funny bits in it that are intentionally funny too. It's supposed to be satirical and whatnot, but all the pretentious stuff is intended. There. Was some explanation for the massive stunt casting too. The box pissed me off so much. About half way through it chucks away anything interesting about the villains and makes it obvious that it's just a Christian thing, a test to get into heaven or such. There's a really exciting scene in a car where a new character starts telling the main bloke about what he's found out about the baddies but then he just gets killed and nothing happens, unbelievably wooden main actor too.

[surreal]

It's a mess, but should get the award for most promising / misleading trailer ever.  I adore the trailer but think the movie is definitely a one-time viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtp14ikRvxo

[Mister Six]

Yet... all things point to this being accidental?! It's a paradox.

He's got form, though. Isn't Donnie Darko another accidental masterpiece?

I think the man's a genuinely brilliant director - he's got style in spades and is able to create the kind of eerie, otherworldly air that I've rarely seen outside of a David Lynch flick - but he needs to stay the fuck away from the scripting side of things.

[Geraint]

He's got form, though. Isn't Donnie Darko another accidental masterpiece?

the director's cut of that is remarkable in that every single change is for the worse vs the theatrical cut, from major stuff like reinserted scenes and the pacing of the whole thing, right down to the soundtrack.

[Pedro_Bear]

Editors make a film, that's very apparent in the era of lame director's cuts. However, they can only cut and/or paste.

I'll buy into the idea that this guy would do his audience a better service as a director, rather than a jumped-up auteur. This still doesn't detract from the wahtthefuck.jpg factor of Southland Tales. It has to be seen to be believed, yet even I'd hesitate to be the person who convinced someone to do so.

[sirhenry]

It has to be seen to be believed, yet even I'd hesitate to be the person who convinced someone to do so.

Well you convinced me. I've seen it, but I'm not sure I believe. Despite having been sober at the time, thinking back it feels like I was stupidly drunk. Or just stupid. The Christian themes felt as if they'd been written by someone who had only come across the idea on some loon's conspiracy site.

[Pedro_Bear]

Isn't it awesome, yes? It's like an onion; we peel the layers off, one by one, and then start crying. Yet they could be tears of joy?

I still don't know how I feel about this film[nb]There was a so-called "so bad it's good film" The Room, heavily marketted as such, that was simply crap. Tedious crap. Southland Tales is nothing like that. Ditto the rubbish that was The Human Centipede; that was craaaaaaaap and not even in the sort of coprophilic way it wanted to be.[/nb].

[copylight]

Constantine

That film has a mighty fine Norwegian Satan impression, memorable in fact. 

[jaydee81]

I'd never heard of this film until this thread. It sounds intriguing, even just from reading the Wikipedia page. Come on!  A film with a mad scientist called Baron Von Westphalen! I must see it.

One for the funny wikipedia lines here

Box office performance
Southland Tales grossed US$275,380 in limited release at the North American box office, and $81,028 elsewhere, making a worldwide total of $356,408,[38] falling far short of the film's $15–17 million budget.