You'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of certifiably cult movies from the past decade, but Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" (2001) is definitely one of them. This strange hybrid about a troubled teen and his invisible friend (a giant evil-looking rabbit named Frank) could best be described as — take a deep breath — a metaphysical, 1980s-retro high school Gothic, pitched somewhere between "Lost Highway" and "Pretty in Pink."
It launched the career of its star, Jake Gyllenhaal, but Kelly's own career seemed dead a mere one film later. "Southland Tales" (2006), his sprawling, convoluted followup, confounded even the critics (though it makes more sense if you read the "prequel" graphic novels), and it wound up going straight-to-DVD locally.
Fortunately, the director is back on form with "The Box" ("Unmei no Botan"), which has a higher profile thanks to the star power of Cameron Diaz. The film's plot has a dead simple premise: A strange-looking man with half his face eaten away (Frank Langella) shows up at your house one day. He offers you a box with a button attached to it; push the button, and someone, somewhere, will die, and you will receive $1,000,000 in cold cash, no questions asked or answered.