10 Movies You Have To Watch AGAIN To Fully Understand

Richard Kelly's uneven directorial follow-up to Donnie Darko is, if anything, more confounding than his debut, and with less explanation to accompany it.

The Rock does his best to throw off his Rockness as Boxer Santaros, an amnesiac actor wound up in a global conspiracy; Sarah Michelle Gellar sheds her Buffy as porn star Krysta Now, working both sides of an election battle for California and touting her screenplay that predicts the end of the world; two Seann William Scotts put Stifler back in his box with violence and chaos and a Christ-like role in the apocalypse; and Justin Timberlake's anti-pop-star drawl narrates the endtimes throughout.

With the national corruption, drive for alternative fuel sources and Neo-Marxists fighting back against the armed and dangerous established order, one can't help but feel that Kelly saw the future coming. What he didn't see, however, was how impenetrable this film would be.

The plot itself can be broadly comprehended on a first run through, even the time travel, fourth dimension and doppelganger elements, but the rest is something of a blur. There is just so much going on in Southland Tales, including all that happens beforehand and offscreen, that it takes many, many viewings - and The Book of Revelations as bedtime reading - to fully take it in.