The Box

[No_Baseline]

Has anyone seen The Box yet? I haven't, but I just read the enormously interesting and spot on thread about Donnie Darko, and, given that The Box is getting DISMAL reviews, as Donnie Darko did, I'm guessing there is a lot of symbology in the movie going over reviewers heads...

I plan to see the movie this weekend, but hoped to get a jump here with discussion...

[8bitagent]

I saw it. It gets pretty deep into deep state/high weirdness.

Recently I made the remark on how half the conspiracy folks think its "the shadow government" behind all the UFO/Forteana...well, this film touches on that.

[Sweet Tooth]

I just don't know how you take a PERFECT little 22 minute, single set, three act morality play - including opening credit sequence and end credits - and extend it into a two-hour-plus epic conspira-noia catch-all mind-fuck of a movie. The original is PERFECT. I have bolded that word twice now for a reason. Because the damn thing is fucking PERFECT.

This is a movie that didn't need to be made. Who knows? Maybe the end product will end up being worth something. I thought the Manchurian remake wasn't entirely worthless (tho it didn't come anywhere near the original in terms of polipsychodynamic resonance). The director is interesting. He's had interesting things to say. Maybe he'll manage to extrapolate something worth donating a shorty portion of your life to him for.

I'll be seeing it, so I hope so. I'm on his side, despite what I said above. I'm pulling for him, despite what I think was a bad call right from the get-go. Sometimes, you gotta do that.

Yer old pal Jerky

[nashvillebrook]

as a huge Richard Kelly fan, i'm real interested to get the RI take on The Box. i haven't seen it yet, but have read some reviews and swooned over the trailer.

Would also like to see what anyone thought of Kelly's Southland Tales. I loved it. Cheri Oteri as a roller-blading, "neo Marxist" turncoat villain was worth the price of admission alone. Then there's the hallucinatory dance sequence with Justin Timberlake and Janeane Garofalo...and Wallace Shawn in green eye shadow playing a fey free-energy guru and Stiffler from American Pie as a zero-point doppelganger messiah. I was in heaven. The Rock was great, too, as a navel gazing, freaked-out protagonist. Kelly nailed the neo-marxist aesthetic, and, in all seriousness, i think he said something worthwhile about the effect of war culture "back home" amidst the chaos of the movie as a whole.

Here's the Salon review of The Box:
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/review/2009/11/05/the_box

[Peregrine]

Would also like to see what anyone thought of Kelly's Southland Tales. I loved it. Cheri Oteri as a roller-blading, "neo Marxist" turncoat villain was worth the price of admission alone. Then there's the hallucinatory dance sequence with Justin Timberlake and Janeane Garofalo...and Wallace Shawn in green eye shadow playing a fey free-energy guru and Stiffler from American Pie as a zero-point doppelganger messiah. I was in heaven. The Rock was great, too, as a navel gazing, freaked-out protagonist. Kelly nailed the neo-marxist aesthetic, and, in all seriousness, i think he said something worthwhile about the effect of war culture "back home" amidst the chaos of the movie as a whole.

I saw Southland Tales & had to watch it a few times. And yes, I really liked it myself. The dance sequence (didn't see Janean Garofalo?) I thought was a well put together comentary on over indulgence in American culture. That's my two bits on it anyhow.

I would like to see the box & think I'll have to stick that near the top of my 'view' list.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Wanted to like it....really, really didn't. Gorgeous but empty.

Reminded me in a lot of ways of Inglorious Basterds, another high-level exercise in style without content.

[barracuda]

There have been a few abortive threads which tried to raise a discussion about Southland Tales. As much as I enjoyed it, I was a bit disappointed that they never seemed to have made "Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime" into a full-fledged number, which I thought it really deserved. "I Got Soul, But I'm Not A Soldier" was worth the whole movie, though, as well as watching The Rock in full blown paranoid tic.

However, at the moment I'm still reeling from Pontypool. I don't think I'm gonna get over that one right away.

[8bitagent]

as a huge Richard Kelly fan, i'm real interested to get the RI take on The Box. i haven't seen it yet, but have read some reviews and swooned over the trailer.

I'd love to discuss it, but I don't want to spoil it.

I will say that it goes from the "deep state mil-intel" thing to the "woo woo high weirdness" and not the other way around.

[Peregrine]

However, at the moment I'm still reeling from Pontypool. I don't think I'm gonna get over that one right away.

I just rented this, so I'm definitely curious to what I'll think of it, as I tend to be a total chicken when it comes to intense movies.

[JackRiddler]

Saw The Box.

Liked it. Recommend it. Don't want to spoil it.

Spoiler...

































Lots of deep state, empire and mind control themes that will be appreciated here, but integrated into what we ultimately learn is a straight SF plot about an alien invasion prompted by the Viking probe landing on Mars. You will recognize many of the Kelly tropes, visual and metaphoric, from Darko and Southland Tales. Some delicious, insightful scripting and sudden comedy coming out of an earnestness that manages a very good pacing. Extremely creepy Santa Claus scene. Certain set pieces where you can't believe the characters are doing what they're doing, except to allow message delivery.

The real progenitors are "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Pretty much the most believable alien invasion scenario I've seen. No, they don't hide out for a million years and wait for a civilization to develop so that they can destroy it, only to discover they forgot about microbes. They don't come in big ships and start blowing up cities. They don't come with bogus promises and trick us into letting them eat us. The Pentagon and the President and his best friend aren't planning how to meet this challenge. The aliens just take over the NSA from within via a technology "sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic," and start conducting social psychology experiments on the humans, to see just how bad we are, what redeeming qualities we have, and whether or not they want to do us in. In designing the experiment, they draw on the experiences of the covert ops world...

PS - Oh, and from the Salon review:

"So much of "The Box" is deftly unshowy; it builds suspense the old-fashioned way, sometimes seeming more like a movie actually made in the '70s than a contemporary one set in that era."

Yes. Very much appreciated the period detail (which was delivered without the usual commentary from hindsight, and therefore felt real). And, indeed, a 70s film style.

EDIT: After realizing I could hide the spoiler by putting it in white print.

[justdrew]

great visual movie, lottsa good moments, but the end/explanation fully explains things... as the credit roll, it felt like any moment I'd hear...

"We now return control of your television set to you, until next week when the control voice will take you to... The Outer Limits."

worth seeing though

[JackRiddler]

great visual movie, lottsa good moments, but the end/explanation fully explains things... as the credit roll, it felt like any moment I'd hear...

"We now return control of your television set to you, until next week when the control voice will take you to... The Outer Limits."

worth seeing though

My sense was that was the original story and the explanation follows in the order that the protagonists discover it. And what's wrong with the Outer Limits?

[8bitagent]

Speaking of good conspiracy films, I *finally* just saw The Parralax View. Aside from a few cheesey fight scenes and not the best score, I think this and the original Manchurian Candidate are some of the best para-political films of all time. I also can see how David Fincher completely was inspired for this when he made "the Game"

[82_28]

Wanted to like it....really, really didn't. Gorgeous but empty.

Reminded me in a lot of ways of Inglorious Basterds, another high-level exercise in style without content.

Well, I'm gonna have to see this now and fully missed this thread when it was posted last November. This is what I say about all Tarantino films. Donnie Darko, I watched religiously when it came out. Literally, I watched it every night for awhile. There was some kind of undercurrent to that film. It hit me on so many levels. I would get stoned and would point out all kinds of shit to roommates and friends who hadn't heard of it. It had a lot to do with the times too and how it was called off from distribution after 9/11. How it catapulted Jake Gyllenhaal's career and also Maggies and also the connection to Heath Ledger playing the joker.

As I normally do, I try to find some kind of personal synch in just about everything so I can analyze it and put into some sort of Grand Unified Theory.

So a couple years ago, I'm walking down the street -- holy shit -- in Manhattan to boot. My GF at the time says, that's Maggie Gyllenhaal! Sure enough it was. Next day we fly back to Seattle and a few days after that Heath Ledger died. Apparently I was directly under the dude's apartment, loft, whatever it is rich fuckers live in in Manhattan. I don't remember them now, but there was some kind of synch. Donnie Darko fucked me up and made me more aware in so many ways. Maybe I shouldn't see The Box afterall. I'm scared. I've said, basically as a joke that seeing Maggie makes me one degree separated from Donnie Darko and The Joker.

God the music was good in that film, wasn't it?

[82_28]

Speaking of good conspiracy films, I *finally* just saw The Parralax View. Aside from a few cheesey fight scenes and not the best score, I think this and the original Manchurian Candidate are some of the best para-political films of all time. I also can see how David Fincher completely was inspired for this when he made "the Game"

I went on a filmed in Seattle only film junket awhile back. That's how I wound up seeing Parralax View. I wouldn't call it great, but I would say, damn NWA's fuckin' up the program. And fuck, is not The Game underrated as fuck? That, I think is the best film I have ever seen for surprise points alone. The Game is so haunting. It's otherworldly.

Anybody ever seen The Spanish Prisoner?