Sometimes I wonder what the movie making
powers that be are shooting for. Take this movie 'The
Canyons', directed by Paul Schrader and written by Bret Easton
Ellis. Those are a couple of heavy duty, albeit
polarizing cats right there, at least in the small circles
they run in. But then these powers cast Lindsay Lohan,
whose train wreck of a life is played out daily on TMZ and
some cat named James Deen, Deen apparently an adult film star
of note, knowing full well these decisions are going to invite
nothing but derision from, well, everybody. Personally,
it don't make me no nevermind as my main hope is that Miss
Lohan gets her life together, and as of today porn is still a
honest way to make a buck. But we do have 'The Canyons'
to deal with, which I can't really call a good movie, but it
sure was hard to peel away from.
Tara (Lohan) and Christian (Deen) are a couple vacuous Los
Angelinos having dinner with Christian's equally vacuous
executive assistant Gina (Amanda Brooks) and her boyfriend
Ryan (Nolan Funk), a dude so vacuous he might as well not be
there. While the conversation between these four is less
than scintillating, the things that are important that came
out of this conversation is that Ryan, a STRUGGLING actor has
been cast in a horror movie, produced by his girlfriend and
Tara, while being financed by Christian. Understand that
Christian isn't a movie producer in the sense that he likes
movies or is a hard, driven worker, he was just born into
money and his old man has demanded that he do something akin
to a job. Christian chose to make movie. Must be
nice. That's one important thing that came out of that
dinner. The other important thing is that Christian and
Tara like to invite folks over to Christian's palatial estate
and engage in all kinds of sexual depravity. Christian
is fairly open about this, while Tara wouldn't mind if
Christian would keep a few things private between grown
folks.
But apparently there's some conflict going on
as Tara and Ryan used to live together a little while back,
unbeknownst to Christian and Gina, and Ryan is still madly in
love with Tara. Tara seems to still have some kind of
fire burning for Ryan as well but Ryan is broke, and Tara
ain't trying to go back to that. Even if it means having
to have sex with strangers every night. Plus Christian
is paranoid and a little psycho, meaning he has Tara followed
all the time, all the more reason Tara has to be careful that
she's not seen with Ryan.
Tara, unfortunately, was not nearly careful enough. And
where we thought Christian might be a little psycho, it looks
like we might have to adjust that observance to Christian
being completely, off his rocker, bats in the belfry psycho.
Just ask his ex-girlfriend Cynthia (Tennile Houston), who
apparently also used to kick it with Ryan. For an area
with a population around ten million, amazing how closely
connected a few people can be. Regardless, group sex
will ensue.
Far be it for me to look into the mind of someone and judge
what goes on inside that clump of grey matter, but I do think
that many had unfairly passed judgment on 'The Canyons' even
before it was released, if only because of who's in it, and
maybe a little because of who wrote and directed it.
Paul Schrader probably hasn't made a recognized good movie
since 'Affliction' back 1997, Bret Easton Ellis has gotten
rich writing about vacuous, empty people that no one could
possibly like, Lindsay Lohan seriously had to leave rehab to
make it to this movies premier and I'm told that James Deen
had to make an early exit from shooting 'Anal Buffet 8' to
make it the premiere as well. I don't even want to know
what an anal buffet is and why we need eight of them. So
you can imagine where some, particularly those who might be
just a tad bit full of themselves and self-righteous, might
pre-judge this film. I don't know for sure, since I'm on
the inside looking in, but I don't think I'm one of those
people, thus I believe I'm giving 'The Canyons' a fair shake.
Schrader opens his film, and litters throughout his film,
images of shuttered movie theaters. What does this
mean? Hell if I know, but I'll take a stab at it.
If one equates culture and a communal, connected society with
the simple act of spending an evening with like minded
strangers at the cinema, then this tells us that culture is
dead. Highlighted by this vacuous dinner between vacuous
people where the principles are spending the majority of their
time on their cell phones, further detached, even though they
are mere inches from each other. What's the point of
this? Hell if I know.
How does the death of the movie theater equate to a straight
man engaging in homosexual behavior so that he can retain a
low paid part in a horror movie that nobody will see? Or
a group sex power grab where the exploited becomes the
exploiter? Or why a man likes to watch his woman have
sex with other men, as long as he's there to supervise?
Or why this same man might resort to murder for no particular
reason that I can tell? Hell if I know. The
correlation is lost on me.
What I can tell you is that 'The Canyons' is lurid and
depraved and comes from a director who has some experience
with this kind of cinema as Paul Schrader, many years ago,
gave us 'American Gigilo' and 'Hardcore'. It also
contains performances which are… interesting. Most of
this came from James Deen who preened and strutted and emitted
a sort of cool crazy confidence that did propel this movie
forward. I don't know if the kid is a good actor or not,
but he's certainly comfortable in front of the camera.
The rest of the acting performances you can probably take or
leave, Nolan Funk being overmatched and Ms. Lohan spending the
majority of the movie quivering, giving us a character who was
poorly written and directionless, so you never knew where she
was coming from. Lindsay does Mean Girl much better than
she does quivering victim.
'The Canyons' certainly isn't a good movie as it is fractured,
meandering, inconsistent, suspectly acted and barely scripted,
but it is magnetic and because of this we cannot completely
write it off.
