Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

hkfilmbuff Captivating performances from all 4 main characters. Josh Lucas was sinister and scary without histrionics. Julianne Nicholson, somehow reminding me of Shirley Maclaine, was "beautiful" in her own way, freckled and refreshing. the doomed damsel in distress. Martin Donovan was the only likable character, the muscle with a heart. James Franco played the central character, William/Joseph, literally a lost soul in limbo, with a questionable background, who cheated death narrowly by chance, was living on borrowed time, and left to ponder the "meaning" of his existence/life and why he was spared. My take is he was still marking time until he met and fell for Anne, the sex slave of the sadistic and manipulative crime boss. William never had a chance, yet it seemed like he might have found a shred of reality to hang on. The poignant ending belongs to William, Anne and Victor, who still had their souls. "Boss", on the other hand, became merely a footnote.The sparse dialog and the artsy cinematography were note-worthy. The mood and melancholy strains of the soundtrack was a bit jarring at times, but might be intentional to go together with the microcosm surrounding the unsavory lives of the four main characters.Definitely a film for film-lovers.

LeonLouisRicci This beautiful looking art film is...well, it just is. It is brooding and a sedimentary sedative. An anti mainstream tributary with a grandiose vision of non ness. A portrait portrayal of big city criminals with a modern soulless insignificant existence and an existential shallowness.So many movies and television are shot and edited with an amphetamine-like atmosphere speeding along at an addictive, adrenaline fueled pace. This is the antidote. An opposite, opium-like seduction.Calming the audience with a warm wave of emptiness. There is space to wonder and more space to ponder and even more space between the space, lulling the viewer into a comatose comfort with a creative turn that says, wait a minute...wait...wait...not so pleasant dreams...it seems.

zardoz-13 Writer & director Jay Anania's brooding, low-budget, artsy-smartsy crime yarn "Shadows and Lies" could easily have been inspired by the late Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's film "The Passenger." In the Antonioni epic, Jack Nicholson takes over the identity of a dead gun runner and gallivants all over Europe until the mob catches up with him and kills him. In "Shadows and Lies," James Franco plays a man who steps off a plane because he forgot his book and then decides to ride across country on a bus to his home state of Connecticut. When he reaches New York, he learns that the plane that he had booked passage on has crashed and every single passenger has been incinerated. This sounds rather like the first "Final Destination" franchise movie, too. Anyway, at this point, our protagonist obtains a fake passport in Chinatown and begins a new life as an editor of nature films. When he isn't editing some really cool footage on his Final Cut Pro system, William Vincent--as he has come to call himself--gets his kicks by picking the pockets of strangers. Actually, William is pretty good at it, until he finds himself confronted on the street one day by one of his victims. What the victim doesn't realize is that William has dumped his booty in the trash. When William's victim challenges him about his billfold and cell phone, a crime boss named 'Boss' (Josh Lucas of "Sweet Home Alabama") and his chief henchman Victor (Martin Donovan) intervene on his behalf.Boss wants William on his payroll, and Victor serves as the go-between. Eventually, William meets Anne (Julianne Nicholson) and they hit it off. William gives her a kimono, but Victor hears about their assignation and warns William to keep his hands off Ann. Indeed, Boss uses Ann as a prostitute, and a jealous William walks in on her while she is with a client. William wields a lamp and beat the man to death and then takes it on the lam.Anania confines "Shadows and Lies" to a quartet of characters: William, Ann, Victor, and Boss. The action occurs in flashback as the film opens with William following Ann unobtrusively through the streets of New York and then mailing her a letter after a four year hiatus. No sooner has William mailed the letter than he is attacked by Victor. It seems that Boss is a very jealous individual. Victor has warned William to stay away from Ann, but they ignore these warnings. William handles some unsavory business, including an episode with two women who receive a cocaine shipment. When William rejects their advances, the two girls label him gay.Evidently, from his attitude around Boss, William doesn't need the dough and he has no qualms about assaulting people himself. The dialogue is cryptic and often repetitive. The performances are tight-lipped. Martin Donovan fares the best as Boss' chief henchman, while Josh Lucas wears a Van Dyke beard that gives him a sinister look. Franco is Franco; he looks like a pretty boy. Although he can be violent, Franco's character doesn't seem to care a whit about money or emotional displays. He plays in cool throughout "Shadows and Lies." Composer John Medeski's melancholy music adds to the grim atmosphere, while lenser Danny Vecchione shoots predominantly in medium shots and close-ups.Altogether, Anania has fashioned an urban crime drama that doesn't rely on bullets blazing, careening car chases, or ritual torture. If you prefer pictures with subtlety, "Shadows and Lies" qualifies as a must-see. Unfortunately, none of the characters here are remotely sympathetic. Further, Anania keeps us at arm's length from them. They are all a lot of cold fish. If you like your films with less contrivance, you should skip this opus.

Hellmant 'SHADOWS & LIES': Two Stars (Out of Five) James Franco stars in this unbelievably slow and uneventful artsy indie film about a man trying to free the woman he thinks he loves from a New York City organized crime syndicate. It's written and directed by Jay Anania who was one of Franco's teachers at New York University. The film also features Josh Lucas, Martin Donovan and Julianne Nicholson. It's the perfect example of too much style over substance.In the movie Franco plays a small time crook named William Vincent who picks people's pockets and often throws it away. He draws the attention of a local New York City drug runner (Lucas) who is impressed by his skills and apparent lack of humanity. He offers William a job and then a night with his woman, Ann (Julianne Nicholson). William falls for Ann, even though he knows nothing about her, and this of course causes complications with his new employer.The movie is extremely slow paced and very moody. There's very little dialogue and the film is instead content with just giving the viewer long camera shots of the actor's blank faces (mostly Franco). If you're a big fan of Franco and into his looks this might be enough for you but most others will be extremely bored. The directing is kind of cool, the cinematography is beautiful and the music striking but the screenplay is so poorly written. Nothing much ever happens, we learn almost nothing about any of the characters and as a result the film seems very pointless. It starts promising, it's beautiful to look at and it's nice to see Franco taking some different projects but he's not given anything really to work with here. The movie is almost a total waste of time with nothing to offer anyone except some nice photography and some long mug shots for die-hard fans of prettyboy Franco.Watch our review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nse6Wm1EtZU