Everyone was curious about what Richard Kelly would get up to after the cult success of his first feature film, Donnie Darko, which mixed teen angst, time travel and ’80s nostalgia in a very funny and novel way. But no one, I think, was ready for Southland Tales. Kelly’s second film was roundly booed at Cannes and was held in limbo for a year, opening to virtually no box office last year (it didn’t even get a theatrical release here).

Now you can see what all the fuss was about, as it’s out on DVD this week. It’s… well, it’s really something. Set in a near-future United States embroiled in a third World War after a nuclear attack on Texas, the movie features a truly bizarre cast: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as an amnesiac movie star, Sarah Michelle Gellar as a radical porn star/talk show host, Sean William Scott as twins (one a cop, the other a “Neo-Marxist), Mandy Moore as a wealthy senator’s daughter and Wallace Shawn, in heavy eye make-up, as an evil super-scientist.

Did I mention that Kevin Smith plays an amputee? Or that the whole thing is narrated by Justin Timberlake, who plays a deranged, facially scarred Iraq war veteran? Or that it’s also a musical? In three parts? With Web site-like multimedia information windows that pop up on screen to convey expository information? It’s definitely… ambitious. But as I admire Kelly’s spirit in creating a post-apocalyptic pop-cult meta-critique, it’s hardly watchable: too hard to follow, with characters whose intentions are barely decipherable.

Fans of David Lynch are probably aware of the fiasco that was the Lost Highway DVD. Apart from a notoriously bad film transfer, the film was presented in the now almost-unheard-of “pan & scan” format, with the sides of the picture chopped off—a total disgrace. Finally, it looks like Universal has gotten off its ass and is re-releasing the film this month in proper 16:9 format, with a 5.1 sound mix and new transfer