Poor The Rock. With his outsized charisma, cartoonish build and air of sincerity I’m still convinced he has the potential to make great movies. The problem is he doesn’t seem to hook up with any good directors. THE RUNDOWN is still his best movie and it’s a fun time but, come on, it’s no PREDATOR, or even COMMANDO. I believe we, as a society, can offer The Rock more than THE RUNDOWN. So I was excited when I found out the Rock would be one of the stars of this weird new movie from the director of DONNIE DARKO. “Should at least be interesting,” I thought, not bothering to knock on wood.
Trouble is I had writer/director Richard Kelly pegged all wrong. I liked DONNIE DARKO well enough, thought it was pretty original and enjoyable. Saw it once on video and once as the director’s cut at the Seattle Internation Film Festival, which is when I learned that some youths worship this guy. They traveled across the country dressed in DARKO-themed costumes to nervously stammer to him that he changed their lives. That’s weird, I thought.
Then he wrote DOMINO, one of my most hated movies of the last several years. But I blamed Tony Scott. I figured there could’ve been a good script in there, Tony Scott just ax murdered it to unrecognizable bits with his Guiness Book of World Records All Time Worst Editing Ever In the History of Cinema. But after seeing SOUTHLAND TALES I’m not so sure Kelly is clean on that one. In fact I bet he specified alot of that shit in the script. (read the rest of this shit…)
