The Canyons 2013

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The Canyons isn't just bad, it's rank - and it takes a peculiar sort of integrity to denude the frame of life to the point where it smells to heaven. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: A dispiriting, unpleasurable work punctuated with flashes of vitalizing vulgarity. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: An inept, misanthropic melodrama written by novelist Bret Easton Ellis and funded mostly through a Kickstarter campaign. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: The guerrilla shoot seems to have reinvigorated Schrader, and the result is his most stylish picture in years, probably since "Auto Focus." Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Ellis' script seems to invite cartoonish over-stylization-an invitation that Schrader's jagged, jarring direction resists at every opportunity. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "The Canyons" is one of those movies that makes you feel worse just for having watched it. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Ellis throws in lots of references to social media in a desperate bid for cultural currency, while Schrader intersperses the drama with pretentious shots of boarded-up movie theaters to suggest this is all a metaphor for the death of cinema. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: You could put a lot of work into figuring out what's wrong here, but why bother? Pretty much everything's wrong. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: There is much ... noirish kink and duplicity on hand. But Schrader tries to find the human side of it all, and he scores with Lohan, who taps a vulnerability beneath her dissolution to remind you why she's still a movie star. Read more

Matt Patches, Film.com: Has all the elegance and depth of a daytime soap opera. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: It believes it's taking risks it actually has no interest in taking, that it's seeing profundity in the showbiz shallows. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: A lame, one-dimensional and ultimately dreary look at peripheral Hollywood types not worth anyone's time either onscreen or in real life. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: If the creation of self-important tedium were a competitive sport, "The Canyons" would take home the gold. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: The Canyons is inept and de-energizing, and Lindsay Lohan is enough to make you cry. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Despite its impressive pedigree and unorthodox methods, "The Canyons" is hopelessly thin, clumsy and dull. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The Canyons might have been more fun if it had a trashier, or less austere, style. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: "The Canyons" isn't a movie, it's a small, sad, real-life object lesson: This is what happens when you don't hold on tight to all that you've earned. This is what happens when you throw away what you've been lucky enough to be given. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: Schrader just seems angry, as if he's using this film as a tinny megaphone for an announcement of his displeasure with a Hollywood that's left him behind. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The banal script, from "American Psycho" novelist Bret Easton Ellis, feels like a Schrader parody. One effort at "Gigolo"-like neon-lit perversion looks more like an orgy in a laser-tag park. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: I've seen high school hygiene films that are steamier than this snoozer, notwithstanding the underwhelming "mainstream'' debut of popular porn star James Deen, who shouldn't give up his day job. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Sadly, this is a case when the behind-the-scenes story is more intriguing than the one told in the film. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: If the subtext of this misbegotten parade of lame shock tactics is the death of cinema, then The Canyons certainly knows how to nail the coffin shut. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: As a visual symphony, "The Canyons" is often masterful, and while it may be pornographic in places, it's never campy. Read more

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle: A tale of young, vapid, sexually insatiable Z-listers in Hollywood had the credentials to be deliciously awful fun but almost every time something tawdry (and potentially interesting) is about to happen, the film pulls its punches and leaves the action. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The Canyons, a howlingly bad soap-opera-meets-soft-core-porn mash-up, sticks a cinematic fork into Lindsay Lohan, signalling her screen career is well and truly done. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: Those open to a chilly exploration of Hollywood anomie may be surprised at how compelling this tale of amoral showbiz outsiders often manages to be. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: When he isn't indulging in pretentious shots of abandoned, ruined movie theaters, [Schrader] traffics in the kind of dirty-old-man cinema he used to be able to criticize from a distance in films like Auto Focus. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: A movie can be highly imperfect, stilted, or implausible in all sorts of ways-and still be everything you go to the movies for. Read more