Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

BrazenBrunhilda I will not regurgitate the story line of this horrendous clunker of a film, The Canyons; there are many reviews outlining this stark, confusing and confounded movie, so I won't bore anyone with a redundant rehashing of this freakishly odd, depraved and lackluster bomb. All I can offer are a few, hopefully non-cruel notes on the sad fate of it's pathetic, washed up lead actress, Lindsy Lohan. Oops, so much for not being cruel. This film (more like student made video) is a true life commentary on the pitfalls and repercussions of allowing oneself to drug and drink her way into oblivion as Miss Lohan has apparently and unfortunately done. This once beautiful and talented young actress was teetering at the precipice of super stardom; now, she is a terribly aged has-been addict who has run her career and life down the proverbial tube. We have watched in horror, and perhaps morbid curiosity, as this young woman has circled the drain and finally sunk into a virtual abyss of failure, and in the end, written herself into the annals of infamy. It's a very depressing sight to behold. In this instance, art really does imitate life. Well, at least REALLY bad art. Lindsy accepted a role befitting a faded and torn painting of her own life. Maybe she took a major turn at Method Acting. Maybe she could truly see herself mirrored in her character. Maybe this putrid film is another note in her real life swan song. Maybe The Canyons is so hard to watch because I actually see a glimpse of the real Lindsy Lohan in a more heartbreaking light. Then again, maybe I am just trying to justify the very existence of this crud-fest in my own philosophical way.

morrison-dylan-fan With having greatly enjoyed reading Brett Easton Ellis novel The Rules of Attraction a few years ago,I was thrilled to hear from a family friend that he had recently picked up a DVD which offered the chance to see Ellis team up with Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader,which led to me getting ready to dive into the canyons.The plot:After having given up on seeing the spotlights of Hollywood years ago,Ryan is delighted to receive an offer from an up-start producer called Christian,for him to star in Christian's up-coming Slasher movie.Initially not having a clue as to how Christian found out about him,Ryan soon discovers that he was recommended for the role by Christian's girlfriend Tara,who unknown to her current boyfriend had a long-term relationship with Ryan.Attempting to keep their old feelings buried,Ryan & Tara soon find themselves falling for each other,as Christian begins to investigate about how his girlfriend knew about Ryan. View on the film:Despite there being some rather large challenges faced during production, (with Leslie Camila-Rose having to be an understudy for co-producer/lead actress Lindsay Lohan,in case Lohan suddenly decided to not turn up on set!)director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John DeFazio are still able to show an excellent stylised eye for the decaying Hollywood which their characters inhabit.Opening in a bar,Schader and DeFazio use neon lights to give the title an icy atmosphere,as Schader shows the characters cynical,rampant egos to be cold,hard surfaces which are impossible to penetrate.Whilst his fangs have lost some of there (infamous) Black Comedy bite, Brett Easton Ellis still delivers a wonderfully harsh,decaying screenplay.Keeping everyone at the bottom of the Hollywood ladder,Ellis initially shows everyone to be rather complacent with their position in life.As Christian (played by a terrific,smirking James Deem) dangles a shiny future in front of Ryan,Ellis slowly burns away the glossy outer appearance of the characters,to reveal the decaying stench laying within each of them,as Christian makes a gorge in the canyons.

FlashCallahan There's not even any reason to give a synopsis to this dog of a film, its a comeback movie for Lindsay Lohan, and to prove she's serious, she gets naked and does lots of things you would have never expected her to do in Mean Girls....The fact of the matter is, she didn't need a comeback, she hadn't done anything of really any relevance since the aforementioned film, and then that film didn't sell because of her, it sold because of the fabulous writing and the nasty streak it had.This is just nasty, and has some streaks, but hey are just from the fake tan.But wow, this is from the guy who wrote the excellent American Psycho, and Less Than Zero. Even The Informers was a half decent look into the excesses of the rich.And it's directed by the guy who wrote Taxi Driver. Another wow.....So again, this is all about the excess of the rich, and how they can influence the lesser people with their money, lifestyle, and bedroom disco lights.But to be fair, any film that has some called Funk in the film, and James Deen, has to be going somewhere.That's right straight in the bargain bin.Worthless filth.

aforandromeda The Canyons lays it's cards on the table right from the beginning. The opening scene introduces the main protagonists right off the bat, a curious tactic that immediately signposts the motivations of all the characters.Tara (Lindsay Lohan) and her rich boyfriend Christian (James Deen) are a couple seemingly living the Hollywood dream. Christian is in the process of cobbling together a low budget slasher movie, using his considerable trust fund in order to break into the film industry. However, the movie's lead, the naive and inexperienced Ryan (Nolan Funk), has a secret that threatens to derail the movie and shatter Tara's relationship with Christian. What follows is a story of suspicion, betrayal and secrets, set in the seedy underbelly of a Los Angeles populated by dream chasers and wanton, predatory selfishness.The first ten minutes tell the audience immediately that we are dealing with shallow and vacuous individuals, grasping at every opportunity in order to satisfy their self serving natures. This presents the main problems that ultimately ruin any chance that The Canyons might have had of being a compelling drama. In order for a drama to succeed where the majority of the characters are simply dreadful, there has to something to engage the viewer. That could be an interesting script, stylish direction or passionate and sincere performances. The Canyons regrettably has none of these to offer the viewer.Bret Easton Ellis' script is quite amazingly dull. It really does give the actors very little to work with. The story line contains an unbelievable series of coincidences, the dialogue would embarrass an amateur dramatics class and the characters have no depth to them at all. Lohan tries gamely to prove her acting chops in some scenes, but the dialogue gives her nothing but tired, predictable lines to try and give some life to. It doesn't help matters any further for her that she spends most of the movie opposite James Deen, a porn star who has little or no real acting experience. He starts the movie off reasonably enough, but by the end his acting becomes forced and clichéd. Unfortunately, although Deen isn't primarily a dramatic actor, you can't help but feel that a better director could have coached more out of him. However, even he is streets ahead of the ludicrously named Nolan Funk, who gives a vacant, amateurish and dreadfully stilted performance. That leads me to one of the most significant problems that The Canyons suffers from, that being director Paul Schrader.Despite his impressive list of past credits, including directing edgy and challenging projects such as Blue Collar and American Gigolo, as well as writing screenplays for most notably Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, it's made abundantly clear from The Canyons why he doesn't make many movies these days. His style is quite simply outdated and his efforts here show that he has done little to keep up with the changes in modern film making that audiences do not unreasonably expect.The camera-work is creaky and linear, the editing is poor and he overwhelmingly fails to get the best out of an admittedly ragbag collection of actors. You always feel like the crew are in the scene, such are the hackneyed nature of the set ups. For example, many scenes feature an entrance from a character walking into a room with the camera at first at a distance, then either panning across or following them in an unimaginative and linear fashion once it leaves it's previously rigidly static position. Many set ups feel disconcertingly framed, yet they feature hardly anything of interest, lending a stagey, unnatural feel to the proceedings. Strangely, the much talked about sex scenes are so tepid and perfunctory you wonder why they were even bothered with, yet it seems Schrader wanted to elicit some kind of outrageous shock value from them. As they stand, even the actors look rather embarrassed to be in them, even though of course one of them is a porn star.The talky nature of the dialogue also grates even more than it should as the scenes appear disjointed, either being too long or too short, then simply going on to leave the plot devoid of pace and flow. Locations are curiously bland and the cinematography is completely by the numbers. It all feels very much like the work of someone who didn't have any fresh ideas or flair to assist this very oddly assembled cast who were stuck working with such a tepid script. Everything feels very clichéd and predictable, almost to the point of ridicule.While Lohan's allegedly erratic behaviour on the set of The Canyons has been well documented, she is actually the only member of this motley crew of a cast to show any real acting ability. There are a handful of scenes that serve as reminders that before her life descended into chaos, she was indeed an real talent with great potential. It would therefore be unfair to blame Lohan and point the finger at her, as many have done, for the critical mauling that The Canyons received. The real blame must go to Ellis and Schrader. I find it remarkable that such an empty screenplay would be made into a movie in the first place and Schrader is a director who is squarely stuck in the past, with his best days as an auteur sadly long behind him.It's hard to fathom out to what kind of audience The Canyons was aimed at, as it has contains so little in the way of redeeming features. It all amounts to what is frankly an irrelevant and entirely unessential piece of film making that's unquestionably one to avoid. Unfortunately for Lindsay Lohan, this project should have been one for her to avoid as well.