Review: James Franco's Self-Indulgent 'The Sound And The Fury'

This is a reprint of our review from the 2014 Venice Film Festival.

There is only so much matter in the universe. So at some point, simple physics dictates that James Franco must come to the end of the hitherto unending supply of goodwill that has been extended to him in recent years, unless he generates some more by making something that we can all agree is not just interesting, not just full of potential or ambition to be good, but actually, genuinely good. You know, anything — a book, a painting, a cheese whip commercial, an expressionist dance routine, even a movie — that his long suffering fans can point to and be vindicated by, at which point his detractors will only be able to look at their shoes and shuffle about shamefaced. “The Sound and The Fury” is not that movie.

READ MORE: Watch The First Clip From James Franco's 'The Sound And The Fury'

Based on the extraordinary, complex Nobel Prize-winning William Faulkner novel of the same name, Franco’s 101-minute...