Area 52 - Southland Tales Reviews: 33 of 52... Southland Tales Vs. The Box...

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Yet another Southland Tales DVD cover…

I’m not looking forward to this review, and it’s not for the reasons you may think.

As I pointed out last week, my schedule pretty packed right now leading these next couple of reviews to be pretty rushed.

The good news was that I had a full day off with a regular sleep schedule. I woke up early and figured I would knock off my Southland Tales viewing early so that I could enjoy the rest of the day.

So on Sunday… September 29th and 9:30 in the am I started a load of laundry and at 9:45 in the am I fired up Southland Tales.

I’m kind of stunned by the fact that for this being week 33, I still don’t find these viewing to be burdensome. I still enjoy this movie, and I love trying to figure out how to continue to write these reviews.

To show how committed to this project I am, I even paused the movie when I left to switch my clothes from the washer into the dryer. It didn’t even cross my mind until later that day when I realized that I actually paused the movie to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything.

33 times.

What’s to miss?

Again I wanted the story to be fresh in my head because for this week’s review… being that I decided to have another Richard Kelly marathon and watch The Box… in order to see if this movie adds to the mythos of Southland Tales.

Once the clothes hit the dryer, I hit the bottle for another boozy Sunday morning.

I decided to hold off until night time to watch The Box and spent the day traveling down various YouTube rabbit holes while enjoying adult-beverage after adult-beverage.

A poster for Richard Kelly’s The Box…

This is the part that I am not looking forward to.

At 8:30 in the pm I fired up The Box and boy was I not in the right mood for this movie and I’m sure the booze didn’t help.

I learned from last week’s review too… especially when drunk, write more legible notes.

Unfortunately… these notes are as boring as I found the movie to be.

Some made me chuckle though.

  • The wallpaper is crazy.

  • I would hit that button so fast and often.

  • Countdown to the end of the world for one person.

  • Did someone push the button to kill the Rock?

  • Seriously the holocaust I would create with this button. I don’t even want the money, just less traffic.

  • He doesn’t need to work at NASA he can get another job… FUCK YOU… “My NASA job sucks”… even if he was a janitor it’s fucking NASA. (I don’t think that’s an exact quote.)

  • Did he just give her truck nuts? Oh, that was a fake foot.

  • They should have hit the button.

  • I like the rabbit shadow. (Damn it, I rented this movie on Amazon Instant View and forgot to get a screen-grab of this image. I did however note that it happens around 51:19.)

  • To be honest I lost focus and have no idea who she is.

  • I hate that I hate this movie.

  • Oh dear god this yesterday song is terrible.

  • Where did this fat guy come from?

  • Always a fan of an ominous Santa!!!

  • That building looks big enough to hold the mega zeppelin.

  • Kill the kid and take the money.

  • That’s their son? Didn’t know, didn’t care.

As you can see from that last note between the booze and the boredom I don’t think I gave this movie the attention that it deserved.

I was also apparently commenting on Facebook as the viewing took place.

  • I hate to say it but The Box is fucking boring, I'd take the chaos and confusion of Southland Tales over this any day.

  • So fucking boring, kill the kid and Cameron Diaz and the old guy then keep the money. Then go fuck yourself because you have a job at NASA and you're looking for something better. Seriously fuck you. I hate this movie.

  • I get it thought, coming off Donnie Darko (years later) he must have felt invincible, then Southland Tales got greenlit. There was an ambitious plan for Southland Tales but whether or not I like the movie, it failed. Time to cut back on the ambition and you get this.

  • It's like how it took me 5 years after graduating film school to write a feature, I got so hung up on trying to satisfy structure; making sure this happens by page five, and that happens by page 15, that I gave into the formula and suffered for it, writing far less interesting material all for the sake of being marketable.

  • FUCK STRUCTURE! It's past my bedtime so I can say that.

I can only wish that someday I’ll have a collection of scripts that have been produced for some moron to put this much effort into studying and reviewing based on borderline blacked out memories.

See you next week, until then I think this video explains how each and every person dies in Southland Tales.