Eleven years ago, with the release of Richard Kelly’s seminal cult classic Donnie Darko, the thought that I might be one day vying to defend this once prolific director to a dismissive general public and disenfranchised fanbase would have been as counter-intuitive as thoughts come.

Following the theatrical release of Kelly’s freshman effort – which introduced the world to not only one, but two Gyllenhaals – it was widely accepted that the director could in fact do no wrong, and that a long and illustrious career lay ahead as he continued to baffle audiences with his trans-dimensional tales of suburban apocalypse.

Since then, however, everything has changed: a divisive director’s cut, and unofficial sequel and a two poorly received releases later, Kelly is no longer held in such high esteem. He has been derided, his storytelling abilities questioned and his imagination mocked. Nonetheless, with the benefit of hindsight, I cannot help but challenge this new opinion of Kelly as a self-indulgent and impenetrable pulp-existentialist.

Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut

When Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko made its début back in 2001, the cinemagoing public was almost unanimous in its indifference. Well, it would have been if anyone had actually gone to see it. It wasn’t long, however, until overwhelming critical acclaim and persistent word of mouth spread and the film developed a dedicated cult following. With the film’s fans showing an insatiable thirst for more information, eager to make some sense of the film’s most enigmatic complexities, Kelly released a director’s cut in an attempt to maximise his audience’s enjoyment and understanding of the story.

For many, however, the release of the new cut of the movie had the opposite effect, with many viewer’s enjoyment of the film apparently mired by the new and extended scenes. In a somewhat predictable backlash on a film many hadn’t seen coming, stars were hastily deducted and Kelly’s abilities questioned due to a slightly altered pace and an additional 20 minutes of running time. As Kelly delved deeper into his film’s mythology and began to compromise the human element of his story in favour of a greater sense of narrative coherence, the director’s winning streak came to an almost immediate end, and he fell into an underserved disrepute that would haunt his next two features.

But Donnie Darko isn’t a lesser movie simply because Kelly has attempted to elaborate on his initial premise and endeavoured to find a clearer way of telling his story; if anything, it’s gained greater immersive value. The original film was ambitious enough, and while there might be those who miss the margin for interpretation provided by the missing pieces of the puzzle, they underestimate a version of the movie steeped in just as much ambiguity. It’s the same masterpiece, just with a different arrangement.

Southland Tales

The story of Southland Tales‘ troubled production is infamous: lambasted following its début at Cannes, Richard Kelly’s follow-up to cult favourite Donnie Darko re-entered post production for a much needed emergency overhaul – in which the director hacked furiously at a movie rejected by critics as calamitous, self-indulgent and unsalvageable. Even in its heavily edited form, released theatrically eighteen months later, Kelly’s film failed to redeem itself in the eyes of most.

Southland Tales is the sort of movie that features two cars having sex, an unlimited fuel source that can also get you high, and which casts Justin Timberlake only to have him lip-sinc to The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done. It is a film of criss-crossing narratives, conflicting genres and one which has an opinion on just about everything. A post-apocalyptic satire with a dream sequence musical interlude, Kelly has constructed a sprawling narrative which encompasses everything from reality television and celebrity culture to terrorism, cyber-censorship and surveillance. Not to mention the important topic of teen horniness.

But while it might flirt with pretension and occasionally border on the obtuse, Southland Tales is better for its eccentricities than it is worse off. Kelly has crafted an intricate and rewarding tale that – while initially confounding – has more and more to give with every viewing. Casting actors otherwise pigeonholed, Kelly has wrung interesting – if hardly naturalistic – performances from Dwayne Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, while finding an unexpected emotional centre with an uncharacteristically toned-down and heartfelt double-performance from professional idiot Seann William Scott.

The Box

Kelly’s most recent offering is a comparably personal tale of familial and philosophical conflict. Starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz as partial representations of his parents, the film asks what you might do if offered extraordinary riches at the expense of the life of a stranger. With the couple’s decision leading them to discover a society rife with conspiracy and their deal with the devil having unforeseen implications for their only child, the two actors wring almost unbearable tension out of a relatively simple concept.

While the hallmarks of a Kelly production are indeed present and accounted for – from the inexplicable water coffins to the mind-bendingly poignant final reveal – The Box makes a conscious attempt to dial down the crazy in order to appeal to a wider audience. Although decidedly more commercial than Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, however, this is no Hollywood sell-out, the film proving characteristically rife with intrigue and underscored by a welcome intelligence.

With one character’s face blown off and another’s toes missing, this is a movie that spends as much time outside the box as it does within. Packing zombies, aliens and a twist that isn’t so much unpredictable as hauntingly inevitable, Kelly has produced another winning blend of genres that successfully transcends its constituent influences to become more than the sum of its parts. When such parts include an ex X-Man and Cameron “The Holiday” Diaz, that’s all the more surprising.

All in all, then, Richard Kelly isn’t some one-hit-wonder turned laughing stock. To write his movies off simply because they fail to live up to the standards set by his original cut of Donnie Darko would be to do his subsequent works a great disservice. He is an auteur, a filmmaker unwilling to compromise his own vision, however impenetrable and non-commercial it may prove. A Richard Kelly film is one that straddles genres, as well as time and space; one which casts actors against type and juxtaposes music with striking visuals; a movie which strains under the very weight of its filmmaker’s limitless ambition, with a bullet in its eye and a paradox at its heart.

With only three such films to his name, I can only hope that there are many more to come. And so should you.

Want to see what would happen if you put Scream, Donnie Darko and The Breakfast Club in a cinematic blender and whizz it on full power for a minute or two?

MTV have posted the trailer for Joseph Kahn’s long-awaited follow-up to his barking mad biker film Torque. Detention (which is set to premiere at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival this month) is a teen horror-comedy which, judging by what’s on display in the trailer below, has either the makings of a cult classic, or a god-awful John Hughes-esque teen angst high school spoof.

Whatever the outcome, I’m sure this tale of a killer who stalks a group of teens during their senior year of high school will be anything but dull. Anyway, have a look for yourselves and let us know your thoughts.

Casting is underway for Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s next film, which is titled Corpus Christi.

Kelly is producing with Eli Roth, and the project will apparently deviate from the skewed stories Kelly has told before. His last film, The Box, didn’t perform as well as was expected, and suffering something of a critical savaging, though for some reason I’ve found myself wanting to sit down with it again as, like his previous film Southland Tales, I always find something to love about his films.

Here’s how Variety describe Corpus Christi,

The Texas-set story concerns a mentally unstable Iraq war veteran named Paciencia “Patience” De La Rosa, who forges a strange friendship with his boss Ralph Salverson, the wealthy and politically ambitious owner of a supermarket chain.

Doesn’t appear to lend itself to the Twilight Zone of the Richard Kelly of old, but I’m pleased he’s still making movies and just as Jackie Brown took what made Quentin Tarantino great and muted the ego somewhat (and emerged as a far more mature, and decent film than was expected) there’s a chance that stripping back the supernatural elements will leave Kelly with just his characters and that’s an interesting prospect indeed.

If the twisted Southland Tales proved too tangled, and you decided not to see what was in The Box then it’s time to go back to the very beginning of Richard Kelly’s career and the sublime Donnie Darko.

The film which launched Jake Gyllenhaal is a brilliant journey into a parallel Twilight Zone and was one of the earliest defining films of the 21st century.

Now the film has finally come to Blu-ray and HeyUGuys are giving you the chance to win a copy of the Blu-ray, all you have to do is answer the following question using the form below.

Which recent blockbuster featured Jake Gyllenhaal messing around with Time?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• This competition is open to the UK only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close Monday 19th July at 23.59 GMT
• The winners will be picked at random from entries received

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

Here are the special features,

Feature Commentary with Director Richard Kelly •Feature Commentary with Cast and Crew •Feature Commentary with Director Richard Kelly and Kevin Smith •They Made Me Do It Featurette •They Made Me Do It Too Featurette •They Made Me Do It Art Gallery •Production Diary with Optional Commentary by Director of •Photography Steven Poster •B-Roll Footage •Cast and Crew Interviews •Additional Scenes ◦20 Scenes with Optional Commentary by Director Richard Kelly ◦Deleted and Extended Scenes from the Original Theatrical Cut •Cunning Visions Infomercials with Optional Commentary •The Philosophy of Time Travel •Five Original TV Spots •Original Theatrical Trailer •The Director’s Cut Trailer

In 2001, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko opened in theatres. With only a limited release, just 58 screens across the US it wasn’t able to set the box office alight, with a domestic gross of around $520,000, and $4.1M worldwide. When it came to DVD, however, it found a new lease of life. With some interesting extras on the disc, and the release of The Donnie Darko book which included pages from ‘The Philosophy of Time Travel’, we could delve deeper into the mythos of the movie.

 Word spread, DVD’s began to fly off the shelves, and people found a place in their hearts for Kelly’s masterpiece. It provoked discussion, it divided opinions. Most of all, it made people think. Donnie Darko became a cult classic, it made a star of lead actor Jake Gyllenhall, and it catapulted it’s talented director into the public consciousness. Donnie Darko was Kelly’s first feature. He had made Darko on a low budget of less than $5m, and it was the story and thought provoking narrative that made Darko such a popular film.

 The eventual success of the movie meant that Kelly was afforded a higher budget for his highly anticipated follow up, around $17M. Southland Tales was to be an epic story, with some big names attached. Casting and early details about the plot raised some eyebrows. An ex-wrestler, a pop star and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a tale about an apocalypse, and the end of the world? Trust was put in Kelly by his fans however, after all, Donnie Darko wouldn’t have looked so hot on paper either.

 The movie debuted to an icy reception at the Cannes Film Festival. Following rumours of re-shoots and extensive re-editing, Southland Tales was heavily delayed. A graphic novel series meant to lead in to it’s release was reduced in size, due to Kelly’s struggles with the film. Any name value Kelly had with mainstream movie goers was gone, and it was only the internet fans still waiting for Kelly’s epic. Eventually, Southland was given a very limited release, at just 63 theatres, and grossed just $366,000 worldwide.

 Kelly didn’t get to make the movie he wanted. His real vision had been for a four hour epic, a dream that inevitably had to be compromised. Would Southland Tales have been a better movie if Kelly had had his way? Possibly not. Southland was intrinsically flawed, an over indulgent, over ambitious hodge podge of great ideas and poor execution. Unfortunately, unlike Donnie Darko, Southland did not get a new lease of life on DVD either. There was really not much positive buzz about it even from a lot of the directors staunchest fans.

 Kelly acquiesced to the Hollywood system for his third film, and opted for a more mainstream studio picture. Moreover, his movie The Box would not be based on one of his own original ideas, but on the Richard Matheson shoort story Button, Button. He was compromising his creative vision for a fair budget, and a nationwide theatrical release. The source material was however open to interpretation, and the director was able to put his own creative spin and unique ideas to the story. With a couple of A-list, though not overly expensive stars, The Box was a very conservative project in contrast to his last movie.

 Kelly is a very talented film maker, and internet movie fans were looking forward to his next work. The problem is, the general public, the cinema patrons that push a good opening up to a big opening, don’t know who Kelly is. With limited theatrical runs for Darko and Tales, he has never really hit the headlines. Coupled with the lack of real star power in the movie, and a cerebral storyline that is difficult to convey in a trailer, it was always going to struggle at the box office. And it has, having made just $13.5M in it’s first two weeks, against a production budget of $30M. Worldwide, it will make a profit by the end of it’s run, but only a small one.

 Kelly continues to complement his movies with extra content, in the case of The Box it’s another book, that features in the movie, and is available online. His movies work best backed up by internet material, and insider information. That’s why the failure of Southland Tales and The Box might not necessarily be a bad thing, for fans of the film maker at least. Tales was over indulgent, The Box too much of a compromise. Kelly’s films, his stories and ideas, are just not meant for mainstream audiences.

 If he is forced to go back to basics, with a low budget film and intelligent storyline, it may result in another great film like Donnie Darko. With his ambitions reigned in, and no studio execs looking over his shoulder, Kelly could once again show what a great artist he is. It’s most director’s dream to be able to make the films they want with the financial backing and clout of a major hollywood studio. But the truth is, Kelly is an auteur, and much better off working completely independently. I’m looking forward to his next project, whatever it may be, as it may just be the best film he ever makes.

Bazmann – You can now follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

Empire have released the UK teaser poster for Cameron Diaz’s new movie, The Box. The Box is directed by Richard Kelly who has previously given us Donnie Darko. The cult status which Darko has created means that anything Kelly makes must be worth a watch. It’s based on a book by the author who brought us I am Legend called ‘Button, Button’ which was written by Richard Matheson.

Set in the 1970s, Norma (Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden) are delivered a mysterious box to their door. In the box is a button. If you press the button you get $1 million. Also, someone in the world dies.

It’s scheduled for release 4th December and also stars Frank Langella, James Marsden, Gillian Jacobs and Michele Durrett. Click on the poster to enlarge. If you’ve not already seen it, you can view the trailer which we’ve posted on our old site here.