Such a frustrating disappointment

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Based on the 1930 classic by Faulkner, it is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest to honor her wish to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson. I'm sure that 'As I Lay Dying' is great as a book but as a movie? Well not exactly the film is very choppy and badly edited with Franco trying to mix everything in one scene and show as every single detail. Although the acting isn't bad either some of the dialogue is pretty dumb as well especially when Tim Blake Nelson wants to get the teeth of Addie Bundren. Like i said i bet the book is better although i haven't read it but the movie is pretty badly made and also badly directed by James Franco. (0/10)

I always wondered why James Franco was never vastly recognised as a film director than an actor. If you ask me, I say he was always at his best who mostly pick biographies and dramas. This movie is one of the year's widely undernoticed and under-appreciated. As always, that leads me to hate critics who divert the movie fans from this movie a watch.This was one of the best dramas I had seen that set in the rural of the early 1900s. About the family of brothers and sister who lost their mother. As being in a remote village they struggle to travel nearby burial ground that is days away to reach. So theirs quest starts to take twists and turns among siblings and the mother nature. Each of them has individual hidden secrets that not related to their mother's death, but as a character. One after another letting us know theirs another face till the adventures ends in peace.I really liked this movie. The tone of the setting of that era was so perfect. Feels like they all went for a century back to the original time to make the movie so accurately. It was based on the novel by the same name. Might be a fictional work, though, depicts the true lifestyle and transporting system of those times. No fights, no guns, a purely family based drama which might be a little brutal in parts, but kind of realistic according to that era. Don't miss this movie, a movie based on the old era is not frequent nowadays. Movies like this now and then really give a good opportunity to the modern people to know the forgotten culture. Hope you all realise what I am saying about the movie and its material.

Beware - spoilers below!!in this movie you will see - 1. maw laying in her death bed babbling on about how she hates her sons (and other stuff) 2. one son is outside the window to the room his maw is in sawing wood in a rain storm to make a coffin to put her in - she's still alive at this point! 3. they put her dead body upside down in the coffin - (head where feet should be) 4. they drop the coffin while taking it to the wagon 5. they cross a creek swollen with ragging water and the bridge is out - maw's coffin floats away down stream and a fallen tree smacks into one of the sons and smashes his leg. 6. they put the injured son on top of maws coffin (after retrieving it from the creek) 7. its summer and maws wet rotting carcass begins to stink and the buzzards follow them 8. they spend the night at somebodies house and burn the barn down (i never did understand why because at this point in the movie i'm laffing way too much). 9. every little town they go to the daughter (i think she's a daughter) ask for an abortion (her brother is father) 10. the rotting corpus stinks so much they get chased out of town 11. the broken leg guy is all infected so they put cement on the leg!! (the leg gets sawed off later) 12. throughout this entire story the half-wit rotted teeth paw is constantly yelling at his kids to 'respect yo' maw'! 13. they finally reach the cemetery where maw wanted to be buried and they toss the coffin into a hole they dig with borrowed spades. 14. the pregnant daughter gets banged by a pharmacist (his treatment for the abortion) 15. and paw goes somewhere in town and finds himself a new wife and everybody piles back into the wagon and heads back home.This is such a bad movie i have had more fun telling people about it and how funny it is if you can sit through it - a good mixed drink helps!

James Franco has seemingly set out to be the busiest man in Hollywood. Franco unfulfilled by just acting in recent times has taken on art, writing and adapting so called un-filmable novels with the forthcoming McCarthy adaptation Child of God premiering recently and this faithful and very intriguing adaptation of William Faulkner's revered 1930 book As I Lay Dying which had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.It's clear that Franco filmed this atmospheric tale on a limited budget yet was able to recruit some serious acting talent to join him on screen as the Bundren family. Stand outs in the acting stakes are Tim Blake Nelson as toothless family head Anse and Marshall-Green as half cast and grizzled Jewel. All cast members acquit themselves well to difficult material, even Franco's real life buddy and funny man Danny McBride does well in a small cameo like roll. Franco's fine direction of fellow actors is commendable but his artistic decision not so much.A strange choice by Franco is to put screen juxtaposition in a two frame format for roughly half of the films running time. This two pane structure comes off as merely annoying and takes away from the full screen beauty of much of the films images and natural landscape which are wonderfully captured by cinematographer Christina Voros. This technique was employed from an outsiders knowledge to portray the novels various voices and themes yet really is in no way integral to the films telling and as a finished product seems a tad on the pretentious side of things.If you can overcome As I Lay Dying's almost tortuous opening 30 minutes where I found myself more than tempted to stop the film in its tracks there is much to admire in the film and by the last 20 minutes you will find yourself enthralled in this strange and depressing tale of a family lost in more ways than one. As I Lay Dying gives one hope that Franco will do justice to Child of God and perhaps one day his dream project of Blood Meridian.3 concrete casts out of 5 For more movie reviews and opinions check out - www.jordanandeddie.wordpress.com