Movies: The Canyons

(Drivebycuriosity) - Hollywood movies cost usually 20 million dollars and more. Director Paul Schrader had only 250.000 bucks to make his film "The Canyons" (imdb). This project brought together 3 former Hollywood stars whose careers have been struggling. Paul Schrader, who once directed "Cat People" and wrote the script for "Taxi Driver", didn´t have any successful films in the recent years.  The author Bret Easton Elis, once famous for  "American Psycho", was almost forgotten and Lindsay Lohan made more headlines with scandals than with her movies.

My wife didn´t like the "The Canyons". She found plot and characters not interesting. Most of the professional reviewers and bloggers hated the film. But I found "The Canyons" passable.

Schrader & Elis (book & script) tell the story of Christian, a young and bored man, who lives from the money of his rich family. He is obsessed with sex and likes to play cruel games with other people. I think the plot is believable. The American culture has many hyper-wealthy families with a huge political influence. I guess they parent a lot of spoiled kids who consider life just as a game and other people as toys. This reminds me of Senator Edward Kennedy who once caused the death of a woman and got away with it (wikipedia).  The plot also reminded me of "American Psycho", just with less violence and more sex instead. Btw, "American psycho" was way less plausible.

According to the media, "The Canyons" was the first feature length movie for porn actor James Deen out of his genre. Deen is no Christian Bale ("American Psyho"), but he played a convincing Christian, because he was able to show the attitude of this kind of playboy.  Lindsay Lohan was a disappointment. I don´t get it why this boring actress attracted so much fame and why Schrader casted her.

"The Canyons" is a watchable movie but not good enough to restart the careers of Schrader, Ellis or Lohan.