Southland Tales

The U.S. is now monitored by a Big Brother-esque agency called US-IDENT, but revolutionaries in World War III-era Los Angeles are plotting to turn popular opinion against the government. Meanwhile, right-wing action star Boxer Santaros (Johnson) has lost his memory and has started an affair with porn actress-turned-talk show host Krysta Now (Gellar), which is somehow connected to the anti-government plot and the presidential election, in which his father-in-law (Osborne) is the Republican vice presidential candidate. Oh, and Justin Timberlake guards a pier against terrorist invaders while (mis)quoting T.S. Eliot and Revelations. Kelly's twisted, convoluted sci-fi black comedy is, at best, difficult to follow, with far more questions than it answers. When the movie works, it's an entertaining, absurdist post-9/11 farce; when it doesn't, it verges on incomprehensible. Kelly trimmed 19 minutes after the film was booed at Cannes.