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Purely Joyful Movie!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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

This movie is currently on hulu and apparently it was made by Franco's professor which is why he is in it. I think most of us know that you don't need to go to school to create art but this almost seems like a cautionary tale. Do you really want to be taught by people who given the chance, would make this? Isn't this proof that art can not be taught? I don't know. I just know the writing is laughably bad. There are so many long shots of things that I think are supposed to establish some other things but mostly prove that amateur actors and pretentious, sloppy dialogue do not get better if you linger on them. I think the acting was supposed to be detached but whatever they were aiming for they missed it. Now the cinematography was nice and Franco is actually kind of likable and watchable when the movie is not being unbearable. Partially because he looks good here and the director recognizes that so kudos for that. Somewhere down there, there might have been kind of an interesting story. A very romanticized, cliche and unbelievable one that seems more like a fanfiction based on a movie than a movie. TLDR: it's very pretentious and obsessed with being artsy. I'll give them the guy the benefit of the doubt though, maybe he is trying to imitate the room?

This is not a gangster movie.The above point is so important it deserves its own paragraph. Really, this is as much about gangsters as "2001 A Space Odyssey" is about space monsters and laser battles. So if you're looking for a gangster movie then you might wanna find yourself a nice wholesome De Niro movie where he does batting practice on peoples brains.So what exactly is this movie? "In Praise of Shadows" (the film's original title before some marketing bonehead changed it to the flashier yet utterly meaningless "Shadows & Lies") is a film for shadow lovers. No, I don't mean goth chicks who sleep in coffins, although those folks are certainly invited to the party. I mean, in the tradition of the Japanese essay "In Praise of Shadows" from which this film derived its rightful title, it is for those of us who choose dark subtlety over bright glitz. As a line in the film goes: darkness allows us to focus on details that would be lost in bright light. And so, literally as well as symbolically, this is a story that's told against a dark, unknown, mysterious backdrop.James Franco, in his best role ever, is a mysterious drifter with many similarities to Camus' "The Stranger". He is morally ambiguous, neither kind nor cruel, neither good nor bad, but simply what he is. He takes a job as a criminal henchman almost out of curiosity (or boredom) rather than any other motivation. His first day on the job he meets the boss's mistress, and that leads to... shall we say... complications.The plot is certainly a tense one, and whoever wrote the DVD packaging (probably the same bonehead who renamed it "Shadows & Lies") had a field day ramping up our expectations for a wild thrill ride of Scorsesesque proportions. But, here I go again, this is not a gangster film.Sure there's blood, drugs, prostitution and a bullet or two. But there's also hummingbirds, trees, prehistoric jellyfish and a frog or two. WTF, you say? Yeah, doubtlessly anyone expecting a gangster flick will say WTF. But I would sooner compare this incomparable film to the works of Japanese master Takeshi Kitano ("A Scene at the Sea", "Dolls", "Fireworks") or maybe even Kieslowsky. If you aren't familiar with those directors, don't worry; I'll try to explain...Here director Jay Anania (NYU film professor who taught James Franco) takes a deliberately slow and very visually vivid approach. You won't find any jumpy Mtv edits or grandiose camera flourishes to upstage the raw simplicity of the moment. Neither will you find a lot of quippy one-liners or drawn out monologues to express what is sufficiently done with a facial expression. The story being told here is not a flashy, action-packed romp (although, like I said, there are some tense action scenes) but instead it's the story of how one man with no identity, no past and no future, methodically observes his world and forges a sort of identity for himself through actions that can only be described as if he were playing out a dream, one episode at a time.And dreamlike, this definitely is. With a fractured narrative that jumps back & forth in time and often to odd, seemingly irrelevant characters, it disrupts our expectations of a straightforward story. It becomes a challenging mystery--not necessarily how the plot will play out, but who the main character is. What is his nature and what will he turn out to be? And the same is to be said of the surrounding characters: who will they turn out to be, and will they be guided by free will or predestination?Well, it's been a long ramble but if you made it all the way through I think you'll enjoy this movie as much as I did. In closing I'd like to say it one... more... time...Aw hell, why don't I just quote a scene from the movie.WILLIAM: You're talking as if you're in a movie, Victor. A gangster movie.VICTOR: Do you think you're a gangster?WILLIAM: No!

This movie is awful! It moves extremely slow and it has random moments of nothing that seem to last forever. Summed up...it will show a photo up close of an insect for 5 minutes while different people are narrating. Then it shows the guy randomly doing things like just sitting there eating staring off blankly or just standing there yet again blankly staring at something and we watch them do this nothingness for a good few minutes. Then it will flash to the leading lady in a different setting doing a random guy for a minute and then flash back to him eating blankly staring and we switch between the two a few times before moving on to another picture of an insect with a different narrator in the background followed by him standing on a train staring into space and then it flashes back and forth between him standing/staring on the train and the lady doing a different random guy. Most of the movie moves extremely slow with little talking and even less interesting things happening...BORING!!! I guess that's what you get when you buy a $1 movie from the dollar tree. All in all I am giving this movie 1 star only because I have to...if it were up to me I wouldn't be that generous. I am at the point where I would almost pay the store to take it back!

Okay, first of all, I gotta say that I don't think the rating of this movie is very fair.The rhythm of the movie is slow, so if you're not the type of person who could sit still for two hours and adore the visualization of a slow film, just let it go.After the ending, I began thinking how the movie had no purpose at all and that it wasn't sending out a message. And then I thought, maybe it wasn't supposed to. Maybe it was just trying to show a small part of a depressed, not-finding-a-meaning-in-life guy's life. And even so, it still lacked something, it was a little lost, like there wasn't much thought behind the story. It wasn't very well figured out, neither were the characters.But the good news is, it gets you thinking. The photography is beautiful, and so is the acting. James Franco does a great job in this one, every expression on his face has a meaning behind it, the tone of his voice, how the characters linger before saying something, that is All very good. Not so many great lines though, it's mostly body language.After all, I think it's worth watching. There are many beautiful scenes that you wouldn't want to miss, regardless of the not-so-good story.