Southland Tales (Blu-ray)

In 2001, writer/director Richard Kelly achieved cult status with Donnie Darko, an assured debut feature exploring deep existential questions through the lens of 80s nostalgia. Five years later, he followed up with a more ambitious and even more beguiling sophomore effort, in which forces of totalitarianism and anarchism collide against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic, near-future world - the beguiling and baffling Southland Tales. Los Angeles, 2008. As the city stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental chaos, the fates of an eclectic set of characters - including an amnesia-stricken action star (Dwayne Johnson, the Fast & Furious series), an adult film star developing her own reality TV project (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cruel Intentions) and a police officer whose identity has split in two (Seann William Scott, TV's Lethal Weapon) - intertwine with each other and with the whole of humanity. A darkly comic futuristic epic that speaks as presciently to our turbulent times as it did to the American socio-political climate in 2006, Southland Tales receives a fresh - and timely - lease of life with this new, director-approved restoration.