REVIEW: SOUTHLAND TALES - starring Sarah Michelle Gellar

Directors:     Richard Kelly

Producers:     Bo Hyde, Sean McKittrick, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes

Screenplay:     Richard Kelly

Co-starring:     Mandy Moore, Jon Lovitz, Justin Timberlake, Dwayne Johnson

US Release Date:     22 September 2007

Length:     145 minutes

Genre:     Drama

Interesting Character Scale (Helen Shivers=0 Buffy Summers=10}:     seven

Best scene for Gellar:     Krysta on Pilgrims

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CLIP (WMV)

Gellar actually has a song in this film (which was cut from the DVD version). Here it is:

The notion is that a time rift is created in the desert and two people go through into the future, and then return, at which time one of them meets himself and the other meets his own corpse, since they come back a bit earlier than they left. The folks who sent them through in the first place arrange for the death of one of their earlier selves.

This temporal paradox leads to revision of reality. The fellow who meets his own corpse is Boxer Santeros, a movie star who, at the time of his departure, was working on a bad science-fiction screenplay. The fellow who drove him through the rift is Roland Taverner, a corrupt cop and damaged Iraq vet. The new reality is altered by the minds of those creating the paradox.

Par example: When Boxer Santeros left he was married to the daughter of a Republican Senator. When he returned he was involved intimately with Gellar's character, porn star Krysta Now. If I could alter reality I might do something like that.

This world is entirely an altered reality, as it begins after the return of Santeros and Taverner. Hence, the characters are not going to behave like people normally behave. They behave as Santeros and Taverner would have them behave in a bad sci-fi screenplay and post-traumatic delusion.

The best performance in this film is that of Cheri Oteri, who plays Zora.

Watch this film when you have the time to pay attention.

The French DVD, while it has better cover art, does not contain the Cannes cut. Scenes that were in the Cannes cut and either deleted or modified for the DVD have been posted on YouTube. You can find several of them on Fluid Karma, the Southland Tales Fanlisting.

The film played in 63 theaters in the US before being released on DVD. It grossed $275,380.