#954 – Child Of God

With Cormac McCarthy as the source material it’s safe to say Child Of God is not likely to be a date movie. And guess what? It’s not a date movie. That is unless your date likes hill-billy grubbiness in the extreme and necrophilia… then, well, this is the flick for you and your squeeze.

This film is more of James Franco doing what the hell he wants and running with it. If you can bear the unrelenting bleakness, depravity, avant-garde pacing and are a big fan of the novel it’s based on, you might get something from this. If this isn’t you, you’ll probably turn it off at the moment where you watch Scott Haze’s Lester Ballard shit in the woods and wipe his ass with a stick… And honestly, I don’t think anyone would think less of you, probably quite the opposite in fact.

#886 – As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is clearly very tough source material, adapted from the William Faulkner novel of the same name. This doesn’t stop Franco taking it and running with it.

The style is fractured, including split screens and direct addresses to camera. Does it work? Not really, but that’s not the point. It’s a film that feels very much like a project and experiment. One of Franco’s many. And to be so willing to test and try different things is a quality that should be heralded. I mean Faulkner wrote the original work between the hours of midnight and 4am for six weeks and allegedly didn’t change a word… That’s different, right?