Even a staunch Kellian like Manohla Dargis admits that Southland Tales is no masterpiece. What's most remarkable about this sprawling apocalypse scenario, with literally dozens of speaking parts and a dazzling patina of sci-fi effects, is how minor it really is minor not as in personal, regional or small in scale but as in ineffectual, piddling, beside the point. One doesn't mind the stampede of film references (to Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, Alex Cox's Repo Man and George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy) because that's the soul of the intertextual plot but Southland Tales is far too self-amused and even smug for its own good, which gives one less patience for its enervating asides and longueurs. The political humor is flat and obvious (Republicans are anal Bible Belt hayseeds while lefties are rhetoric-spouting dreadlocked anarcho-bladers). The out-of-left-field principal casting of Dwayne Johnson (formerly The Rock) and Sara Michelle Geller (formerly TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is more interesting than revelatory while the parade of former Saturday Night Live troupers (Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler) in supporting roles is disappointing because they mostly rely on their typical shtick. (That said, it feels like a mercy killing whenever a Not Ready for Prime Time Player goes down in a hail of automatic gunfire and squib juice.) Richard Kelly is a self-professed fan of David Lynch, which explains this film's reliance on nonlinear narrative chicanery but Southland Tales lacks the blood-born perversity and the flat-out personality of Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2001), which dealt more successfully (if no less maddeningly) with portents and symbols and the end of the world, if only as we know it. There are occasional moments of brilliance, such as the curtain warmer depiction of the destruction of Texas on the Fourth of July 2005, but a handful of grace notes can't conceal the bloat of this fat lip of a movie, which feels very much like a student thesis blown out of all useful proportion.
Whatever its faults as a piece of storytelling, Southland Tales is a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. What no doubt looked bright and clear on the big screen has been well preserved on the single disc DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Letterboxed at an anamorphic 2.40:1, the widescreen image is clear and abundantly colorful, making the blimp's eye views of downtown Los Angeles and the street level depiction of grubby Venice Beach equally impressive. The disc's Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is also strong and clear. In short, this disc is presentation material. Extras are limited to the 30-minute making-of featurette USIdent TV: Surveilling the Southland, presented as surveillance footage, and the 9-minute apocalyptic animated short This is the Way the World Ends. English, French and Spanish subtitles are optional but essential if you've ever wanted to know how to say "Don't rock the cock" in other languages.
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by Richard Harland Smith
