Movie Review: The Canyons (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Paul Schrader gets no respect. After considerable trouble mounting his newest film, The Canyons, detractors seem to be delighting in pointing out how shallow the film is, taking particular aim at his casting of porn star James Deen and troubled actress Lindsay Lohan as the leads. It's another instance, a la The Lone Ranger, of critics taking part in a bit of schadenfreude. Months before its release, a journalist examines a movie's troubled production history ad nauseam and the zeitgeist signals rough times ahead for said film. But those looking only for evidence to support their pre-conceptions are missing or willfully ignoring the underlying tension Schrader explores in The Canyons, an elegy for traditional cinema and its filmmakers in the advent of fractured world of digital moviemaking.

On Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

by Tony Dayoub

The recent Criterion Blu-ray release of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ was occasion for me to revisit a film I hadn't seen since 1990. Back then, I was neither mature enough to comprehend the full weight of its ideas, nor was I well-versed enough in Biblical lore to truly appreciate why fundamentalists might consider the film radical. Nor was my knowledge of cinema as comprehensive as it is now to understand the movie's place among the lineage of Christ films which precede and follow it. In truth, I'm not sure that even a lifetime of exposure to any of these topics might provide any further insight into this mysterious film than I possess now. So rather than address the movie in the form of a typical review, I've decided to simply introduce some thoughts that struck me as I watched it, with the hope that any readers might want to discuss these (or their own thoughts) in the comments section below.