Director: Paul Schrader
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 1.0
Bret Easton Ellis' disdain for affluent L.A./Hollywood types once again crops up in this film he wrote about sleazy trust fund baby/"producer" Christian (James Deen), his 'open' relationship with an actress (Lindsay Lohan, who's half in the movie and half checked out) and her 'secret' love affair with a model (Nolan Gerard Funk). While I regard Ellis as one of the best writers of his generation - and, full disclosure, I feel American Psycho is one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century - this particular movie not only feels like a retread of concepts he explored in his actual books, but a less-funny, less-developed version of those books, almost as if some up-and-comer decided to write a story in Ellis' voice. In his writings, his eloquence and dark sarcasm are everywhere - here, we're left with Deen and Lohan awkwardly mouthing Ellis' glib dialogue and Schrader gleefully filming what amount to (for this day and age) innocuous sex scenes. In Ellis' writings, he makes beautiful but soulless people fascinating in their soullessness - on screen, they're just shallow sociopaths toying with and being jealous of each other.
