tapehead wrote:Works fine for me, although I do have Quicktime Pro and a pretty sick Mac at work. Frank Langella looks creepy with part of his face missing, and, like Burl said, I dig the 70's stylings and Diaz's Farah Fawcett hair... but it starts going all Southland Tales at the end with some brief shots of pretty dumb-looking CGI, so my enthusiasm is suitably tempered.
Well it's pretty obvious that Richard Kelly has discovered James Cameron's T2 special effects software package and has been playing around with it for each of his films...
I wouldn't consider myself a worshipper at the altar of Donnie Darko, and certainly the hype surrounding that movie had revved a lot of people up to rage against Southland Tales, which while not a very cohesive film did not deserve all of the ire it attracted.
The Box falls somewhere in the middle. It is in the end a tighter film than both Darko and Southland Tales, though thematically it's closer to the former. Still I felt that The Box was the sum of two not totally even parts, which is I suppose an after-effect of having created something as discombobulated as Southland Tales (note: I liked Southland Tales and I consider it one of the greatest movie disasters in recent years).
But The Box ain't Southland Tales. I don't think Richard Kelly will make himself any new friends with this movie, but he definitely won't disappoint those who choose to see it.
Like I said, the film is more taut than his other projects, more straightforward. Even the "metaphysical" jibber-jabber is clearer here than it's been in prior Kelly films.
*MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW*
And any concerns regarding the moral conundrum of the box being unreasonably stretched out can be extinguished, the whole box thing is dealt with rather quickly in the film, or felt so anyhow, and certainly this is the stronger part of the film. In the first half we have a human story with hints at something bigger, but basically you are enjoying the suspense of it and basking in the glow of '70s period images. Things get a little strange in the second half, but not in as confusing a way as in Donnie Darko... this may be one significant down-point for the film, because in the end everything plays out on the surface and you're left with a slight feeling of emptiness.
Besides that there are some glaring loopholes (inconsistencies, weird transitions, I dunno what to call them) that made me think that Kelly was sort of correcting himself during shooting, that some big changes were still being made to the script and story as they went along... it's not the same as having scenes removed, it's just that there are a couple of loose ends having to do with secondary characters or even the "logistics" of the events taking place.
In the end I had a pretty good time watching The Box... it's good mainstream entertainment and I think maybe fans of Richard Kelly will be happy that he's tried to keep things rather simple but at the same time still try to stimulate in the same way as he did with Donnie Darko.
now.
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