As I Lay Dying (James Franco, 2013)

7.5/10
This is James Franco's second directorial effort after his 2011 student film The Broken Tower, and is an adaptation of William Faulkner's novel of the same name. The novel is noteworthy for its stream-of-consciousness style and its unconventional storytelling methods (15 different points of view recount the story). Franco makes some stabs at attempting to recreate those techniques on-screen, such as relying heavily on a split-screen approach and having characters give monologues directly into the camera. I found that generally these techniques worked and weren't distracting, though I could see how one might call them self-conscious and gimmicky. The movie is good, well-acted by all and extremely faithful to the book, and I don't think it would be inaccurate to suggest a lot of the movie's success is derived from Faulkner's words. It's no great shakes but it's a competent, enjoyable adaptation and I look forward to Franco's next book-to-screen translation, Cormac McCarthy's Child of God.

Interior. Leather Bar. (James Franco & Travis Mathews, 2013)

7/10
Al Pacino starred in a movie in 1980 called Cruising, about a cop going under cover in New York's gay and S&M scene. Roughly 40 minutes had to be cut out of the movie for it to get the MPAA's approval, and those 40 minutes have purportedly been lost forever. James Franco and Travis Mathews set out to "reimagine" what that footage would have been. Interior. Leather Bar. is not that footage, however, but a documentary about filming that footage - so most of it centers on the casting process and how the participants (straight and gay alike) feel about essentially shooting gay S&M porn, focusing in particular on the straight actor playing Al Pacino's part, Val Lauren.
The question raised almost immediately is if this is an authentic documentary or not - everything seems a little too perfect, with Lauren's vague homophobia being the perfect foil for Franco to come in, deliver some "we are the world" speech, and see the light. It's also incredibly self-reflective - in one scene we see Lauren, sitting alone in a parking lot against a brick wall, reading aloud from the script for "Interior. Leather Bar." which describes how the Pacino character is reading the script alone in a parking lot against a brick wall. At another point we hear a voice "directing" a conversation between actors that initially appeared to be just a casual conversation.
What blunts the film is its hour-long running time. Rumor has it Franco's schedule only allowed 2 days for shooting, so this is what we get, rather than a complete film. There are interesting questions posed and the film is shot in a nifty way, but it's hard not to feel like it's only half-baked.