Southland Tales
- sombre
- surreal
- bleak
- cold
- twisty
- signature
Sombre, steady, measured sci-fi / thriller, surreal in texture. Nihilistic, epic, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →Set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.
Our read · Southland Tales (2007) reads as a sombre, steady, surreal sci-fi · thriller · comedy entry — measured in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of Southland Tales
What watching it is actually like.
“You want baffling dystopian collage energy you'll argue about for days.”
Skip it tonight — You need a plot that makes sense in one sitting before midnight.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself