Shadows & Lies

IMDb Link

This film is desperatly trying to be deep, it's trying to be European and philosophical. It should be called 'Brooding & Bullshit.'

Yes: it's pretentious boring shit. Even the actors look bored out of their minds.

This is mostly a film about James Franco looking sad, a woman who fucks a lot and some dudes who try to look menacing, but aren't. Then there are two kids that represent the main character's past and you just wonder why the fuck they are there. Except to represent the past in a heavy-handed way.

There's a semblance of a plot at some point, with a boss, money, a job, 'danger.' And there's the boss's woman. I think the screenplay was this: 'Man walks. Eats. Broods. Looks at animals. Then a woman. Note: try to have a plot. No, fuck that, who needs a plot? That's so clichéd.'

There are good actors, Franco is not completely bad and it's always nice to see Martin Donovan, but he sould have been the boss and Josh Lucas the muscle. So they even managed to fuck up the casting.

I wonder what the hell the movie is trying to say. In my opinion: nothing. It tries to be deep by showing us beautiful images of insects, birds and inverterbrates as if these images represent the characters in the film. But they don't.

It tries to be original and cool with its sound editing, but it's just nonsensical. Hearing people having sex while James Franco does all he can to be like James Dean brooding down the street is just silly.
It's also obvious that the framing of the actors is supposed to be edgy and artsy, but it just looks bad. It's as if the camera operator was Stevie Wonder and the DP Ray Charles, but without any talent whatsoever.

After a (very short) while, I just wanted to slap everyone in the film. Then slap the director. I wanted to shout at the screen: 'Come on, snap out of it! What are you? Hypnotized?!' The monotonous music doesn't help either. In fact, that's just one more piece of shit piled onto this perilously high dung heap.

Maybe the 'director' was going for the whole Herzog hypnosis thing. But probably not. I hear the person responsible for this cornucopia of broodiness is an NYU film professor. I bet you he makes his students watch his film, which is the only way people would sit through it: with the menace of getting an F if you don't watch it. But at least now, thanks to this, we can definitely agree with the old adage: those who can't do, teach.

Really: I've seen student films that had more depth and looked more professional than this garbage. The problem with most bad directors is that they equate depth with boredom. So they think that if their movie is slow paced, if the characters look bored, if women walk around naked (oh, my God! How European!) and the dialogue is stilted, then they've made art. They think they can be the next Bresson or Rohmer and, in their tiny little heads, they probably think they are. Because they think they are making 'art.'

Yeah. Art. I just made that kind of art in my toilet. And not only was it more satisfying than this movie, but I also got to flush it away.