Brighton Screens Southland Tales

Get ready to experience a unique blend of science fiction, thriller, and comedy as Richard Kelly's Southland Tales comes to Brighton's Wagner Hall. This 2006 film is set in a futuristic Los Angeles on the brink of social, economic, and environmental disaster.

Dir: Richard Kelly

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Bai Ling

145 mins · 2007 · Germany, United States of America, France · Cert 15 · English

IMDb 5.3/10 · Rotten Tomatoes 41% · Metacritic 44/100 · TMDB 5.3/10 · Trakt 55%

Awards: 1 win & 3 nominations total

White Wall Cinema: Southland Tales

2 Dec 2026

Wagner Hall (Brighton)

In a dystopian Los Angeles, an action movie star suffering from amnesia finds his life intertwined with a pornstar developing her own reality TV show and a police officer with a split identity, all set against the backdrop of a Fourth of July heatwave weekend.

What kind of film is Southland Tales? Southland Tales is a science fiction, thriller, and comedy film, directed by Richard Kelly and starring Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Seann William Scott, with a runtime of 145 minutes and a certificate 15 rating.

How was the film received? The film has scores of 5.3/10 on IMDb, 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, 44/100 on Metacritic, 5.3/10 on TMDB, and 55% on Trakt, and has won one award and received three nominations, with some viewers finding it to be a mess, while others appreciate its unique blend of genres and predictive storyline.

What's special about this screening? The film will be screened at Wagner Hall in Brighton on Wednesday, 2 December 2026, and tickets or details are available with the button beside this article.

Stills

What viewers say

geomagneto

People will look back at Southland Tales after Trump and say Richard Kelly predicted the entire decade, and them some. Those who don't get the film just have low IQ's and can't see the brilliance of it. [spoiler]A hitman with amnesia, a reality television president, the bs conspiracies and angry vets while Tech Companies create an elite political class existing off human capital a midst a climate apocalypse (followed by a nuclear one); welcome…

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rickay · 1/10

Holy shit this movie is so bad. Such a waste of time. Avoid at all cost.

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jarvis-8243417 · 5/10

Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is an insanely bizarre and macabre film with Lynchian undertones. An actor named Boxer Santaros goes on a ride-along with a LAPD cop to research a screenplay that he's writing, but events lead Santaros to believe that his screenplay isn't as fictional as he thought and that reality isn't what it seems. The plot is incoherent; full of meaningless tangents that go nowhere and that don't service the main storyline.…

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bukman · 1/10

This is a movie that when I am ranting about other films is the "Ten" in the "on a scale of One to Ten..." Example: On a scale of One to Southland Tales, how frustratingly painful was this movie?" I watched this movie over a decade ago and I still feel the poison of it in my veins to this day. I guess if you are going for memorable, that is one way to go about it. I have spent too much time in my life (including writing this) thinking about,…

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HiImDannyGanz · 4/10

When I watched this movie, it was in an arthouse theater. We walked in twenty minutes late, and were totally lost. I thought that watching the bit that I'd missed would make the movie make sense. I was wrong.

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dogg724 · 2/10

Holy fuck is this an amazingly terrible movie. I honestly couldn't say much more than the booing audiences and professional reviewers when it came out. Even trying to watch it at twice the speed the "plot" drags unbearably. I don't know what's going on, I don't want to know, it's not going to go anywhere, and I'm writing this with 20 (45) minutes left because I need something to do in between the long nothing shots meandering about the room or…

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NakorTBR · 9/10

More relevant now than when it was made. This is a very funny movie. It is super critical of US culture, government, and religion, so you have to be evolved enough to understand that kind of thing. In a time when I am driven to strongly dislike my southern neighbour country, this movie says a lot. Not everyone is going to be able to grasp this movie. It is an absolute trip from start to finish. Also, I'd say the predict a lot successfully in…

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LNero · 5/10

> ,,We're taking the ATM machine with us to Mexico." ==== —trans-dimensional cop Stiffler > ,,The fourth dimension will collapse upon itself. You stupid bitch." —Jericho Cane This is a strange (first) watch in 2025. Strike that. It's a strange watch, but it's bizarre how predictive of the future it was. It's kind of hard to tell, though, since it's such a mess. Reading some of the lines from the film right after watching it got a bigger laugh…

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