The Canyons

Lindsay Lohan stars as Tara and lives with boyfriend Christian (Sevilla, um, I mean Deen) in Hollywood. They both have ties to the movie industry, Tara being an actress and Christian a producer, although that's not very obvious. The narrative never discusses any work they've done in the past, the only clue of either being in the industry at all is Christian being remotely involved in the production of a small-scale horror movie. Christian mainly gets his money from his rich father, promising to stay out of trouble.

Young actor/model Ryan (Nolan Funk) is considered for a role in the movie being produced, but it's only after this when Christian finds out that he and Tara used to be a couple. For some reason this makes him insanely jealous. Suddenly he's suspicious of Tara going back to him, we do see the two of them get together briefly but it doesn't seem like a huge deal (in one scene, Ryan asks Tara if she would go back to him but she says that they were poor when they were together). Christian starts spying on Tara's text messages and has his friends covertly follow Ryan and Tara around town to report what they've been up to (again, not much in reality.) He even tries to jeopardize Ryan's part in the movie by getting a gay member of the production to hit on him. (For no apparent reason other than trying to be shocking, Ryan also briefly gets hit on by the boss at a restaurant he works at to make ends meet.) Meanwhile, Christian has at least one other woman on the side himself, so it isn't like he completely believes in commitment. He even routinely seeks out other guys online to come have fun with Tara while he watches and takes pictures. He comes across as wanting to be in control more than anything else.

The Canyons plays a lot like many other forgettable direct-to-video movies, with Lohan being the draw for viewers. That's not entirely a bad thing, but with Schrader directing and the story written by Bret Easton Ellis (best known for American Psycho and Less Than Zero) I expected a bit more from this. While the cast does a fine job, the characters seem one-dimensional with little reason for us to care about them. Lohan seems to make a decent effort to break out of her more savory past roles; she swears plenty, smokes and even does some nudity here, which may be reason enough for some to check this out. I'd seen James Deen in porn parodies of The Brady Bunch and Ghostbusters where he mainly tried to be funny, his role here shows that he does have a reasonable amount of legitimate acting talent. As Ryan, Nolan Funk seems to be too "nice" and "normal" to associate with such bad people. His character may have been a bit tougher on paper, but onscreen he just seems like a decent person who ended up in the wrong places with the wrong people.

Schrader punctuates the film with shots of the inside and outside of several abandoned movie theaters in between some scenes. While after several viewings I've failed to see how these relate to the storyline, they are fascinating nonetheless (a montage of these plays repeatedly during the disc's main menu, which is quite nice to look at.) I have to appreciate the brief scene shot at the old Amoeba Music store in Hollywood as well. Here Ryan shops for a bit on the second floor where most of the video media was stocked, not having much to do with the plot but likely the filmmakers showing the store a bit of love. Having spent many hours there it's nice to have a record of what it looked like before the store moved to their new smaller location which isn't worth the six-hour drive as much as the old one was for me.

Note that this movie was released in both Unrated and R-rated versions, the latter having one noted trim. This disc release is the Unrated cut.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-Ray
IFC Films' new Blu-Ray release through OCN comes in a clear case with a still of Lindsay Lohan on the reverse side of the cover insert. Inside is a nice full-color booklet with an essay titled "Woman on the Verge" by film critic Mitchell Beaupre, giving a bit of background on the movie's production. The Blu-Ray disc annoyingly forces an unskippable 20-second copyright warning and IFC Films intro on startup, but then gives you the option to resume from whatever point the disc was last stopped at (whether it was during the main menu, the movie or any extras).

The Canyons was shot digitally in a 2.35 ratio. It maintains a film-like look for the most part, with grain added to some scenes. Details are fine, only a bit lacking after watching other movies in 4K (being shot digitally before 4K resolution existed, this likely wouldn't have benefitted much from a 4K disc). Bright colors, particularly reds and pinks, are highlighted here. I do not have the previous Blu-Ray to compare but scouring some older reviews, there were apparently instances of compression artifacts for that older disc that I did not see in this release.

The 5.1 audio mix, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio, isn't much to write home about but serves the material well. Most of the sound is kept up front with dialogue centered and ambient sounds in the front left and right, the surrounds are hardly noticable. Brendan Canning provides a unique, often atmospheric music score as well.

• New audio commentary by film historian Adrian Martin gives a bit more background on the movie's production, and at least attempts to convince viewers that The Canyons is a noteworthy film.
• New video interview with director Paul Schrader (18:45) has him talking about the production, saying that it was the result of a bigger movie that fell through right before production started. 
• Haunted by The Canyons Video Essay (11:22) is narrated by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas over footage from the movie; like the commentary it makes several arguments for considering this movie noteworthy.
• Creating The Canyons Featurette (8:44) is carried over from the original Blu-Ray release and has the usual insights from cast and crew giving a decent look at the movie's production. There are also five more "featurettes" running about two minutes each with looks at the cast, crew, locations, look and style- these appear to have been made mainly for promoting the movie online during its release. One interesting bit, with the major fire in southern California recently, has the owner of the house featured in the movie speculating that it would likely be destroyed in a fire someday so he was happy to have it immoralized here.
• Original Trailer (1:13) is brief with quick cuts from the movie with some critic quotes- it ends with text saying "See it in select theaters or in the privacy of your home," as it was an early case of a movie being released on Vudu and other digital rental services at the same time as its theatrical release. I remember the rental price being around $10, certainly more reasonable than the $20 range premium digital rentals go for nowadays.

I'd seen The Canyons earlier, and found it mostly forgettable aside from Lindsay Lohan's nudity and the appearance of the former Amoeba Music store in Hollywood (I may be showing my age by debating which of those is more significant). Despite Paul Schrader's involvement, it felt like a typical direct-to-video (or streaming) movie, it was nice to look at but I kept asking who the characters really were and why I should care about them. Re-watching it now, my opinion hasn't really changed much. It's certainly worth watching at least once, but I wouldn't call it a must-have for most movie collections. The extras in this release at least attempted to convince me to have a higher opinion, but they weren't enough to change it. Worth A Look