Friday, November 20, 2009

Movie review: The Box

Richard Kelly makes a kind of cinematic train wreck is impossible to look away from. I felt it the first time I saw Donnie Darko. So much so that I saw the movie opening night and then again the next afternoon.

The feeling was more pronounced with Southland Tales, a film so randomly bat-shit crazy it should have been unwatchable. But there I was after 144 minutes wondering what the f' I had just seen. I may have even asked it out loud.

The Box is neither of those movies. It lacks all of their redeeming qualities (the randomness of Southland Tales and the hipness of Darko). This is a long-play version of a Twilight Zone episode. It's a moral question (would you trade a human life of $1 million) played against the backdrop of a silent alien invasion.

That's the take away at any rate. Kelly adds other subtleties (the wife with the gimpy foot, the churning water as transportation portal), but they're mostly overlooked.

Still, something about this film transfixed me. Even as I was watching, knowing that it was long and a bit boring, I wanted more. Which ultimately makes the movie, what? Good, in it's own weird way?

High points:

* Kelly nailed the 1970s look, down to the nauseating orange and brown kitchen wallpaper.

* A guest spot from Britta from the funniest show on Television.

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