So the TV happened to be on a station that was showing Southland Tales. My friend and I missed the first 52 minutes, but the movie was weird enough to draw us in.
It had weird elements, much like Crimewave, the Big Lebowski, and Repo Man, that were enough to draw me in but not overly interesting. After watching it through to the end, we felt like it was worth watching, but we had no interest in watching it from the beginning. It was like there was an unspoken requirement to watch the film, and now that we did that, we were under no obligation to deal with the film again. I did rewind to the part where the Baron was making a deal with the Prime Minister of Japan because that scene was awesome and bad, especially since the Baron was played by the Sicilian from Princess Bride.
And that's another weird thing about this movie. It had a huge cast. Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, John Larroquette, Christopher Lambert, Jon Lovitz, Seann William Scott, and a bunch of other people I have surely forgotten. Yet despite such a cast, I was not familiar with this movie. How could this have slipped under my radar for the past 10 years?
The timing of the movie is appropriate. It was filmed in 2006, five years after the World Trade Center attack. This movie has biting commentary on the War on Terror and American chauvinism. It also makes some jabs at hyper-consumerism. You can tell this is an intelligent piece of work, but the pacing was off.
I'll still need time to digest it. It was on Encore, and I recently sent my cancellation, so I don't know if I'll have another chance to watch it. I could set it to record and see if watching the first 52 minutes makes a little more sense. I suspect not.