Southland Tales (15)

The new film from Richard Kelly, the writer-director of 'Donnie Darko', 'Southland Tales' is a sprawling, post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller set a year from now. There are too many characters to name, but most of them are linked to a cadre of "neo-Marxist" terrorists in Los Angeles. Among them are Seann William Scott as a pair of identical Iraq war veterans, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as an amnesiac action hero, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star touting her own chat show and energy drink. What they've all got to do with Fluid Karma and Quantum Entanglement is a chaotic, psychedelic puzzle which I doubt even Kelly himself could solve. 'Southland Tales' premiered at the 2006 Cannes festival, where it was hailed as one of the most calamitous films in living memory. Kelly has since cut 20 minutes from the running time, and uses Justin Timberlake's droning narration to fill in the many, many plot holes. He might have been better off lengthening it into a TV series. 'Southland Tales' is mind-numbingly long and slow, and yet still feels as if half of it's missing.