The Box- Post Release. - Page 2

Saw part of this last night

After some epic candlestick bowling, I watched some of it with friends

Let me say this up front: South Land Tales was one of the worst films I've ever seen

It was the first movie I ever turned off without finishing when I had the DVD at my house. The experience was so painful that I just had to step away and say 'enough!'. I was not going to sit there and watch Kelly's nonsense. I also felt like he was probably a hack with no real talent or vision.

Oh, and Cameron Diaz is someone I can't stand, so that was another strike against BOX as far as I was concerned


So, when I produced my copy of BOX from REDBOX and suggested we watch it, I was expecting an MST2KX experience with my friends filling in for the puppet robots. Instead, I was shocked to discover that Kelly is a MASTER of menace and atmosphere. I was really impressed with how the movie just kept amping up the dread. I knew that whever the explanation for the crazyness was, it would never live up to the run up, but I didn't care. Unlike SLT, I was enjoying the ride. In SLT I just became more pissed off at the movie with each passing minute.

So what if BOX ends up in a stupid place? If a movie terrifys me for 1.5 hrs, I'm not going to hold a lame last 20 minutes against it.

I do have to qualify my remarks by saying that the score to this film is phenominal. Easily one of the best I've heard in years. Kelly definitely got a huge assist from teh music, and I'm not entirely sure how much credit for the sense of palpable dread the film creates should belong to the composer.

I had to go home and we ended up not finishing it (we turned it off right around the place where the film sort of started coming off the rails, with 20 minutes left). I'm excited to see the end tonight though. Even if the conclusion to the story is laughable, that won't change the fact that my heart was beating twice the normal rate for most of the film.

So yeah, Kelly, good job. You just convinced me you really do have talent. Just stick to good scripts ok? Because when you're on your game and the script is stong (like the first half of BOX), it's a magnificent thing

I think "The Box" is certainly less indulgent than Southland Tales, but believe me, be prepared to change your mind once the film falls flat on its face in the last act and drags its crippled corpse across the finish line with nary a lick of tension left in its proverbial body. That's my two cents, anywise. A very solid concept that starts well, continues to lean more and more on its gripping music score for assistance, but once logic departs, the film can no longer support its bloated bulk.

You know what? I really liked this. For whatever reason, the twist really appealed to me.

SPOILERS!!! (I guess)


The idea of a Martian intelligence taking over the CIA through the Viking space program, reanimating an intergalactic lightning strike victim, only to have him go all Rod Sterling on an unwitting All Americna couple? As long as they play the concept straight and don't acknowledge how delightfully crazy it is, I have to sort of admire that

There were moments where it got too goofy for it's own good (the library scene, the sound effect of people turning around in their chairs killed it). But over all? I was on the edge of my seat for pretty much the whole thing


It felt, well, not real, but events of the film felt like they had weight. It gave me a sense of queasy unease that few films deliver on. You really were meant to feel the horror of the situation, that some all powerful force had effortlessly re purposed America's intelligence agencies for sinister and unknown purposes, all in some alternate 1975 (found in a remote corner of..... The Twilight Zone )


Yes, it was very self important, but unlike SLT, it wasn't boring and stupid. It was really thrilling, and for whatever reason I happened to enjoy the Big Secret

PS Best Cameron Diaz performance since ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (for whatever that's worth)

Atmospheric Act 1 &2. I was strangely intrigued up till the library "reveal". Then it just went laughably bonkers. The performances were odd (and reminiscent of Cronenberg and Lynch films) and the weird music was fitting. Liked the period piece and NASA inclusions, but hated the fake Southern accents. Ultimately, I was reminded of human guinea pig sci-fi flicks like CUBE and THE FORGOTTEN, but with the haughty bed-shitting of the more recent M Night flicks.

I enjoyed this wacky flick, which is not surprising since I absolutely loved Southland Tales, which was even wackier.  I appreciate that Richard Kelly is trying to do something different.  And whether you respond to it or not, you have to admit he's doing his own thing.  At least he's not some self-important mumblecore chasing around Indie Pixie Dream Girls or one of the hacks on a committee making awful effects extravaganzas likes Cowboys & Aliens.  I like Richard Kelly for the same reason I like Rob Zombie -- they're doing their own thing, and originality is hard to come by these days.

 

Fuck me this was awful.

 

I'm somebody who was always very Emperor's clothes with Kelly...Darko wasn't a bad movie, it was just terribly overrated...it didn't make much money upon release and faded into obscurity, where it belonged.  But then the Hot Topic crowd got wind of it and it became this weird cult movie.

 

I knew there wasn't much talent to back up Kelly's inflated sense of self importance.  I couldn't bare to sit through the entirety of Southland Tales.

 

I was willing to give him another shot here, my expectations couldn't be lower...so I was pleasantly surprised when this started out pretty interesting.  The first act was creepy enough to keep me interested (but there was something awkward and tone deaf about the whole thing).  But after she pushes the button the film sinks like a fucking stone, each scene worse than the last.  And that library scene!  It just devolves into convoluted, faux intellectual garbage, which Kelly seems to be the master of, with ideas that go absolutely nowhere (for instance, what was the point of Diaz having missing toes?  Oh, that's right so she could deliver that hilariously bad empathy scene with missing face guy toward the end...the point of which is?).  And the ending was so bad I nearly turned it off.  Kelly relies on creepy music and creepy stares to make things...creepy, but there is nothing to back it up...it doesn't organically grow out of anything.  It's just weird shit with no explanation = creepy and disturbing, but it's unearned and therefore holds no narrative value.  Then EVERYTHING is explained in extreme detail while narratively it shits the bed.

 

Kelly's films are like bad Syfy channel movies with just enough cool stuff in them to trick people into giving them a chance.

 

I think Kelly is doing a small movie next with Eli Roth producing.  Great, two hacks who have found each other.  It's fitting since Roth's taste is terrible as well, he's probably the only guy in Hollywood who will give Kelly the time of day.

 

There was a devin's advocate article a while back that said Kelly should direct other people's scripts...that he was a great director and just needed the right script.  But he's not a great director, because great directing isn't just about pointing a fucking camera and setting mood.  You also have to have good taste in the material and be cognizant enough not to fuck up the script.  Directing is also interpreting the script, and a good script can definitely be ruined.  If Kelly were handed a great script, his stoner intellectualism, Syfy channel sensibilities, and clumsy story sense would fuck it up.  I don't see how anybody can watch total and utter how to shit the bed tutorials like Southland Tales and The Box and then think all he needs is a good script.  He's a bad director.  All he needs is a music video career.

Edited by Ambler - 4/17/12 at 3:00am