Southland Tales: An Extremely Good Movie

(here's what I sent to IMDB. possible spoilers)

So, did you come here wondering what it's "really" like? Well imagine if Robert Altman and David Fincher co-directed an adaptation of a novel co-written by Philip K. Dick and Chuck Palahniuk. Yes, the fact that I put Fincher and Palahniuk in that sentence together does mean that Southland Tales has an anarchic (in the fullest sense of that word) sensibility similar to that of Fight Club, but I don't think that it's a "guy movie" in the same way that Fight Club is. The sheer originality and depth of this movie is astonishing. Even the way that it achieves its originality is original. What was that? Southland Tales relies heavily on what they call "pastiche" in postmodern theory: it takes a million things you've seen before in a million niches of popular culture and whirls them together like a "Will it Blend: Millenial Americana" YouTube video. Yes, it blends!

There are so many aspects of it that made my jaw drop ranging from the casting of teen idol Justin Timberlake in the role of the facially disfigured narrator, to the bizarre insertion of an incredible precision-choregraphed song-and-dance sequence at the movie's midpoint, to the glorious arrangement for string quartet of the Star Spangled Banner as sung by Mulholland Drive's Rebekah Del Rio.

There were scenes that made me burst into surprised, embarrassingly loud laughter. There were scenes that made me nearly jump out of my seat from the shock. There were scenes that froze me with deer-in-the-headlights terror.

And, oh those casting choices. From numerous Saturday Night Live alumni in both comic and serious roles (including a deadpan, scene-stealing Jon Lovitz) to Highlander Christopher Lambert selling heavy armaments out of an ice cream truck.

Without a trace of irony in his performance.

And that is truly one of the strengths of this film: it refuses to “wink” at the audience. It plays all of it’s irony fast and straight as a Bladeless Lasik IntraLase® laser. It doesn’t have the time to wink, and it doesn’t give you time to blink either. Writer/director Richard Kelly knows how complex and irony-laden this stuff his and he trusts the intelligence of his viewers to keep up with him and not have to be told when to laugh.

And it is a complicated movie, but if it weren't complicated it wouldn't be so good.

See it today!