Anyone with half a brain can smell dud a mile away on Richard Kelly’s “The Box.” Frankly, he might be the most overrated young director in recent memory — the “Donnie Darko” director’s cut was actually far worse, overexplaining the ambiguities and robbing the picture of its mysteries and “Southland Tales,” is one of the most misguided efforts of this decade.
As for “The Box” so far there’s only one screening in New York and at a very inopportune time during the day which doesnt breed a lot of confidence. And Jeff Wells has a report that says, don’t get your hopes up. “I strongly doubt it [will be a mainstream success]. This period sci-fi thriller (i.e., set in the mid ’70s) suffers from a complete lack of logic and woeful miscasting of the lead roles — and, worse, is almost totally devoid of tension.”
Gee, a Richard Kelly movie with a complete lack of logic? Shocker.
What’s worse is one of the only elements of the film we were looking forward to — the Bernard Herrmann-esque score written by members of the Arcade Fire, a decent amount of which you can hear here — doesn’t appear like it will be released on CD anytime soon.
Soundtrack CDs are generally listed more than a month out on various retailers like Amazon, etc., but “The Box” — which has suffered from many release date bumps, never a strong indication of quality — is scheduled for a November 6 release date and all the usual suspects, even the Arcade Fire’s Merge Records site, have zero upcoming information.
It’s odd because the “The Box” (like all Kelly films) is slathered with pop music tracks by The Grateful Dead, Derek & The Dominos, Wilson Pickett, The Marshall Tucker Band, and Scott Walker (admittedly some nice off-the-beaten path choices) and Kelly himself has saidthe trio who composed this score (Win, Regine, Owen Pallet of Final Fantasy) have composed up to 80 minutes of score, so that’s certainly enough for a disc on its own.
Perhaps the one hope is an ITunes-only release, but one presumes we also would have heard about that by now. In a recent interview about his favorite pop songs, Kelly said, “I had to yank a Pink Floyd song out of The Box at the very last minute due to money issues. But maybe one day I will get another chance.”
Dude doesn’t have bad music taste, but his use of it in film and his pictures themselves could use more than a little fine tuning. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised? We’ll go in with an open mind, but we’re not even sure we’re going to make any press screening (not plural) before November 6.
