Southland Tales / YMMV

Awesome Music:
- Elbow's "Forget Myself" in the trailer, sadly not making an appearance in the movie itself.
- The music Moby composed for this film is up there with his best work.
- I got soul, but I'm not a soldier... I got soul, but I'm not a soldier...
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Lots.
- A scene with a Japanese Prime Minister agreeing to have a pinky cut off for the energy source... only to have his entire hand cut off. In the Cannes cut, this scene was near the beginning and portrayed the other man as the Baron's business rival and perpetual thorn in his side. Additionally, the lingering look Serpentine gives the severed hand is what makes her first think the Baron is nuts and has to be stopped.
  - Also slightly racist when you consider only the Yakuza do that kind of thing.
- Also, the somehow live-action Disney Acid Sequence where Ju-Tim lip syncs to "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers, as latex-wearing nurses dance '40s-style at him. It's a dream that Abilene is projecting into Taverner's head, and is a callback to the graphic novel, which reveals that just before the battle in which Taverner accidentally scarred Abilene, Abilene listened to "All of These Things That I've Done" when he borrowed Taverner's iPod on the helicopter.
- Don't forget the scene where characters start reciting the lyrics to "Three Days" by Jane's Addiction. The song is about remembering a threesome with a now-dead lover. Good luck figuring out how it fits in with the rest of the movie.
- That insanely weird car commercial featuring automobile sex. Even Frost, a major character in this supremely bizarre universe, is taken aback by it.
  - On that note, the shots of elephants fucking. It's supposed to be a Take That! at the Republican Party, but it's implemented with no context and, again, chose elephants fucking to present it, which renders it as this.
Critical Backlash: It was (and still is) one of the most hated films from the 2000s, with some even went far as calling it the worst movie ever made. However, in recent years, critics and moviegoers looked back into it, and, while pointing out the legitimate flaws of the film, admired imaginations and seer ambitions behind the movie. Many people enjoyed it as a tongue-in-cheek satire of sci-fi movies around that time and shouldn't be taken seriously in one way or another.
Cult Classic: Not on the same way as Donnie Darko though, but it's garnering more defenders as time goes on.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Jon Lovitz as a stoic, monotone cop. He's the only character in the entirely-against type cast where it's alienating for the right reasons, rather than merely confusing.
Esoteric Happy Ending: Well, most of the characters died in the same explosion. But it's mostly okay, given that among them were the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and the Whore of Babylon. Depending on how you interpret the characters. In the meantime, the Taverners shake hands, forgive each other/himself, are pimps and thus cannot commit suicide, and it's the Second Coming of Christ. The world may still be ending, but Jesus has returned so all is well. Maybe.
Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: May very well be a valid interpretation of the film. Or maybe just The Rock is Jesus. Who knows?
- The film's characters are parallels of characters from the book of Revelation in the Bible: Boxer Santaros is the Antichrist, the Taverners are the Messiah, Dream and Dion are the Two Witnesses, Krysta Now is the Whore of Babylon, the ice cream truck is the pale horse that Death (Martin) rides on, Pilot Abilene is the Horseman War, Serpentine is the Dragon, and Fortunio is the false prophet.
Genius Bonus:
- Baron von Westphalen being behind the neo-Marxists is blatantly apparent early on if you know that "Treer" and "von Westphalen" are Karl Marx's hometown and wife's maiden name, respectively. Apparently, the Baron is supposed to be his descendant.
- Serpentine has a tattoo of two snakes twisting up her spine. In the Vedic religions, Kundalini, or "serpent power", is a metaphysical snake coiled at the base of the spine that gradually goes up towards the head as a person gets closer to spiritual enlightenment. In the graphic novel, she's the one who told Boxer the legend of religious tattoos "bleeding". Guess her religion didn't win the contest, then...
- Lou Taylor Pucci's character, Martin Kefauver, is named after of Tennessean politician Estes Kefauver, who took an issue with Kiss Me Deadly when it released in theaters.
Narm: Quite a bit in this film.
- Boxer's nervous tic that looks like him imitating a paranoid squirrel.
- "I am a pimp, and pimps don't commit suicide" was ridiculous enough the first time it was used (as justification for why Boxer couldn't have killed himself). It becomes flat-out hilarious as the final line of the movie, dramatically repeated as the (maybe?) Second Coming of Christ (maybe?!) ends the world.
- A delusional woman, believing she's a character in Boxer's script, jumps a confused Boxer and delivers her character's exposition and cryptic clues to him. Then she puts a gun to her head and announces she'll kill herself if she can't give Boxer a blowjob. ...And gets sniped anyway for her trouble.
- The continual refrain of "This is how the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang." Apparently Kelly didn't grasp that T. S. Eliot was invoking irony when he said that, and reversing it just makes it into a Captain Obvious statement.
- "And do you know what we did when we found a hole in the fifth dimension? We launched monkeys into it."
Narm Charm: Kelly stated the film was inspired by Andy Warhol. As such, the bizarre dialogue can be enjoyed like the supremely what the fuck line, "To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life… in the gall bladder!" from Flesh for Frankenstein. Aside from that, given that the screenplay The Power is literally superimposing itself over reality (with characters like Boxer and the Baron's executive staff self-consciously assuming roles and reciting dialogue), the narmy dialogue can also can be taken as a deliberate comment on predestination and the artificiality of film as a medium.
Nightmare Fuel: Lots, but especially Jon Lovitz.
Questionable Casting: The entire cast. Sarah Michelle Gellar cast as a porn star, Dwayne Johnson cast as an amnesiac, and very dweebish actor, engaged to Mandy Moore, playing a foulmouthed heiress, Sean William Scott playing two traumatized soldiers with identity issues, Amy Poehler and Wood Harris as extremely stupid terrorists, Justin Timberlake as the disturbed and disfigured narrator, Kevin Smith as an Iraq War veteran and black ops agent, Wallace Shawn as a glam-rock criminal mastermind, Bai Ling as his laconic girlfriend, that kid from Thumbsucker playing a street punk, Christopher Lambert playing a small-time arms dealer, and Jon Lovitz as a terrifyingly dead-eyed neo-nazi cop. It may not be spot-on, but damn it it's surreal to see these actors in roles so different to how you'd assume them to play.

This was actually done quite intentionally, although (like a lot of the film) the intended effect is not really that clear. In other words, the setup is there but the punchline isn't. Excerpted from an Internet-based article: "The biggest disappointment of Southland Tales resides in its most promising conceit, a cast populated by B-to-D-list celebrities ranging from Wallace Shawn to Zelda Rubenstein to Christopher Lambert. There's a wealth of satirical material to be found in [this] generation's curious veneration of kitsch, and I'd hoped Kelly's cast list indicated a deeper explanation of the connection between pop culture and regression touched upon in Donnie Darko..." (Full article here.)
- In an interview, Kelly stated the stunt casting was intended to give the audience some mild comic relief. He deliberately cast comic actors and familiar faces as a way of alleviating the darkness of the story.
- Also done in-universe, as the Neo-Marxists inform Boxer he was cast as a cop for a "movie" (in truth, an attempt to convince him their plans are All Part of the Show).
Signature Scene: Abilene's "All These Things That I've Done" Dream Sequence.
So Bad, It's Good: General agreement is that this film is funny for all the wrong reasons.
"And do you know what we did when we found a hole in the fifth dimension? We launched monkeys into it."
So Okay, It's Average: As much as polarizing the movie is, go to Letterboxd and see how more people giving it an average reception than outright vitriol.
Spiritual Adaptation:
- A dystopian tale revolving around an unmade film script and a drug making people happy draw eerie parallels to Infinite Jest.
- Long before Inherent Vice, many people viewed this as the closest thing for Thomas Pynchon's book being adapted into a film due to its pop culture references, raunchiness, satirical look into a modern world, and dense plotting involving bizarre conspiracy. They think only Pynchon could write a novelization of this movie and Richard Kelly welcomed such comparison when a film critic asked him about it.
Squick: There's an animation of two SUVs having sex. And you get to see it in detail. Three times.
- ...and elephants having sex.
Tough Act to Follow: Given Richard Kelly was following up his cult phenomenon Donnie Darko, this was rather inevitable. It's early response was notoriously bad (it was booed remorselessly at Cannes), and when it did finally get its theatrical release a year later (in a shortened, slightly reworked version), reviews were still pretty poor and it sold even less tickets than Darko (which was also a major flop when it was released). Though it did get some vocal supporters at the time (mainly Village Voice critics past and present) and still has its fans that mostly agreed it was best not to take it too seriously, it never came close to finding the massive cult success of his previous release.
Vindicated by History: Not on the same level as Donnie Darko, but as the time enters into The New '10s, it garnered some cult followings with occasional screenings at underground film festivals (most notably, Boston Underground Film Festival has screened this movie back in 2017) and a growing critical reevaluation.

YMMV / Southland Tales

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