The credits show a series of derelict cinemas, now just ruins, before cutting to a kind of business lunch in which beautiful, vacuous movie people talk about movies and sex. The scene would appear to be 'badly' written and acted but brilliantly directed; if this is what constitutes the movies today it's little wonder so many theatres have closed down. You might call Paul Schrader's "The Canyons" a satire on the movie business but it's much too sour to be truly satirical. For decades Schrader has always been Hollywood's Number One Avenging Angel, condemning sex and violence in his puritanical fashion while showing it in extremis.Now he has turned his jaundiced eye on the business that has been providing him with a livliehood from the seventies onwards. It takes time to get your head around the inane dialogue and the stilted acting that in lesser hands might have condemned this to a straight-to-video release but this is an expensive production, brilliantly photographed in widescreen by John DiFazio, its money shots coming, not from below the belt, but from inside Schrader's head, or should we say from inside Schrader's head and that of writer Bret Easton Ellis who has also been biting the hand that feeds him for quite awhile now.The problem lies in the casting. It's one thing having good actors play 'badly' but it doesn't really work in reverse. The lead here is played by porn star James Deen who is supposed to be someone who, if not exactly intelligent, is at least successful and in this role Deen never convinces for a second. Lindsay Lohan, on the other hand, is somewhat better. Lohan is someone who might have had something of a career had her personal life not got in the way. Everyone else is cast for their bodies and not for their brains which, I suppose, is just as it should be in a film about an industry that seems to have been founded on sex. No doubt the 'Me2' movement will find much here to back up their argument that Hollywood has long been operating on exploitaiton. At least Schrader has fun telling us that all this is bad while wallowing in it. Of course, most people haven't caught Schrader's little jest as intended and the film flopped. It may be far from his best work but I think it fits perfectly into his canon.

This is a pretentious piece of crap, with a nary a good performance to be found. The story is repugnant and boring, and all of the characters are soulless, vacuous and empty. Granted, I'd heard about how bad this movie was before I even saw it, but I still expected a little more from Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis. The story is about some trust-fund kid (James Deen) who's also producing a movie so that his (unseen) dad will get off of his back. His live-in girlfriend is played by Lindsay Lohan, and the small cast is rounded out with other characters who know each other, and sleep or have slept with one another. Still, most of the movie is just boring, lifeless dialogue interspersed with some of the most unerotic sex I've ever seen, which includes a foursome. I mean, what were these people thinking? The only redeeming qualities are some good soundtrack selections and good camera-work. That's it. It's best just to take most people's word and just skip this trash.

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.

'The Canyons' is a farcical tale about a collection of characters who deceive and manipulate each other to distract from the emptiness of their lives. Chief amongst them is a sociopathic film producer, Christian, whose jaded girlfriend Tara reluctantly consents to the sex orgies he arranges with random internet strangers. After Tara helps a former boyfriend, Ryan, get the lead role in Christian's new movie, they resume their old affair, despite Ryan having a girlfriend called Gina who is also working on the film. Christian grows increasingly suspicious of Tara's fidelity outside the group sex dynamic, and has her followed by a slacker private eye, while he hooks up with a former assistant, who is also an old girlfriend of Ryan.This juvenile nonsense is merely the set-up, and director Shrader cannot elevate the subsequent hokey-pokey above the level of a day-time soap after making disastrous casting decisions with Lindsay Lohan, James Deen and Nolan Funk as his lead trio. The only competent actor is Amanda Brooks who plays the scorned Gina in a minor role. Although she's actually five years older than Lohan, she looks fifteen years younger and fifty times more desirable than the supposedly irresistible Tara. Sex is a crucial plot element, but no erotic intensity is generated since the characters are pathetically undeveloped. Instead the film wastes many tedious minutes on lengthy shots of them entering and exiting cars and buildings. 'The Canyons' limps along with wooden direction, dialog, acting and storytelling, failing miserably to invest this portrayal of Hollywood's seedy glamor with any vitality. None of the deceptions and manipulations have any discernible goal, but they eventually lead to a pointless act of violence and an implausible tired conclusion.