Saw Southland Tales. It was nuts! Overstuffed with plot, imagery, and allusion in the spirit of The Invisibles, Tank Girl, and Transmetropolitan. Jesus figures, twins, fiercely political pron stars, inexplicable dwarfs (because of course inexplicable dwarfs,) a Watchmen-style ubiquitous smiley face, even a strangely prescient government spying program. On top of all of this awesome nonsense it features performances from Amy Poehler, Dwayne-The-Rock-Johnson, the always-up-for-a-bit-of-weirdness Wallace Shawn, and a bible-verse quoting Justin Timberlake.
This film comes from the same director as Donnie Darko, a film which I didn't like very much. I didn't like Donnie Darko because I saw the absurdity and artistic experiments in it and mistakenly assumed it was trying for (and failing to achieve) some level of profundity. Really it was just trying something new and I expected too much from what was really a grab-bag of intriguing techniques and ideas. Similarly with this film it's easy to mistake this for having (or intending to have) some kind of profound point. There is no profundity here, just amazing visuals and rampant, overwhelming absurdity. This movie is bullshit. Amazing, amazing bullshit.
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