the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)

Henry Alex Rubin & Dana Adam Shapiro's Murderball (2005)

Last Days (2005) - Gus Van Sant

Drove to a theater that I hope to never have to go to again to see this one (let's just say splitting an atom is less complicated than their parking garage). Well knowing nothing about the film I went in blind. I began to notice many, many similarities to Blake (Michael Pitt) and Kurt Cobain, just as everyone noticed similarities between the teens in Elephant to the Trench Coat Mafia of Columbine. And I tell you, with the glasses, and jacket, I could have sworn I was looking at Cobain (Pitt even sings like him too). The rest of the cast has some interesting moments (Asia Argento keeps her clothes on again), and Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) makes an appearance as what my guess would be Blake's mother, or something like that.

Overall I can't say the film had quite the same impact that Elephant had, but it was damn good, and the more I think about it, the better I like it. Last Days is a film that stays with you, it runs through your mind, and that's good for a film. All too often I forget everything about a film as soon as it's over. I can't imagine this film is going to make ANY money here. The city of Chicago had it playing in only one theater (that's including all the suburbs), and that one theater on a Friday still had about 7 people in it total. It's a damn shame, because people went to see Van Sant's much lamer films like Finding Forester and Good Will Hunting, but well there's no accounting for taste. I hope Van Sant stays on the art house route that he's currently on, I really think the man is at his peak.

Also got to re-watch Last Year at Marienbad (1960). This one was the first Resnais film I had seen, and since then I've come to understand and appreciate his style much more. On a second viewing I found myself falling asleep just as I did the first time. I also wasn't as completely captivated as I thought I should have been. A second take didn't really help to elevate this film. Sure I think it's better than the last time, but I still would probably prefer Providence or Mon Oncle D'Amerique to this.

Glad somebody else here saw and liked Last Days and you'll find my enthusiastic review of it on this site here http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/show...&threadid=1444 -- it would be nice if you could discuss it on that thread I started. I'm assuming nobody has seen it or has anything to say about it since the thread hasn't had any contributors other than me and arsaib. How can that be? I regret that it disappeared quickly before I got another chance to watch it in the theater because it's a visually beautiful movie just like 2046. If people say "I'll wait for the DVD" they just don't know what they're missing.

Have you seen Gerry? That is one with the series, Gerry, Elephant, Last Days. Very artistic, very personal, definitely reclaiming terroritory Van Sant lost with things like Finding Forrester and his pointless Psycho remake.

I may have appreciated Last Days more because I have little knowledge of or interest in Kurt Cobain. Though obviously I know the story of his end, in general, I wasn't distracted by thinking about Cobain for a minute while watching Last Days.

Each one in this last trilogy by Van Sant establishes its own world, pace, and mood.

Of course Elephant has the most impact. But Last Days may be the most haunting of the three. One critic said, "The poetry of Last Days has a stoned grandeur," Manohla Dargis: "One of this year's indisputably great films." Unfortunatley, it didn't do that well even critically. I'm afraid it's Elephant that is going to last in people's collective critical movie memories. But the three, Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days, should really be seen as a single long hypnotic meditation on youth and death.

I have the DVD of Elephant.
I'm watching it again tonight.

Hey, I liked van Sant's Psycho. He updated it and made it even more creepy. Vince Vaughn was pretty wacko.
William H. Macy was in fine form.

Sant's Psycho has gotten a bashing since 1998 and I think it's undeserved. I understand the blasphemy crowd when it comes to Hitchcock cinephiles but cripes who can complain about the new shower scene?

I'd certainly prefer to see Last Days on the big-screen. Harry Savides' work probably deserves it. But this film is another example of the shrinking "window" between the theatrical and home video release. It had a limited run starting on July 22nd and Oct 25th is the DVD release date.

It seems like the number of releases this year have been far greater than before. It's been tough keeping up. I just saw Broken Flowers and The Constant Gardener but I feel like I've missed on so many during the past few weeks. Will post a few thoughts on the Jarmusch film tomorrow.

Would love to hear your comments on Elephant, Johann. I believe this Palme D'or winner was one of the best films of 2003.

I'm sorry if I seem to be bashing Van Sant's Psycho, Johann, and I can understand your liking it, and I happen to love Vince Vaughan, who's on top of things now with Wedding Crashers' huge success --not undeserved, but I wish more people had gone to Last Days..... The Psycho remake may eventually become the delight of cinephiles. Certainly it would be a perfect thing to use in a film course. To me I have to confess it seemed a "sterile exercise." And rather incomprehensible. Why? I just wish Van Sant had spent the time doing something of his own. But overall, it's been a great career, and a richly varied one, and here is a gay filmmaker who's made it into the mainstream, and still remained gay, and made it back out again. And that's pretty cool.

I don't remember Macy in Psycho. For me he is rarely memorable, and only works well as a complete nerd, as in Magnolia, "Quiz Kid Donnie Smith." There, he was well used, and performed well.

I'd agree Elephant was one of the best of its year, definitely. They thought so at Cannes too.

I'm sorry about the shrinking window; Savides' work in Last Days is superb. And he sees big.... never more than in Gerry -- where the desert landscapes are simply amazing; awesome, forbidding, harsh, and endless. Gerry is on a huge scale, and demands to be seen on a big theatrical screen, and up pretty close.

For me, DVD/videotape is a great tool for study or for catching up on things, but it just doesn't work on the same level as theatrical viewing of films.

Lacombe, Lucien by Louis Malle was just shown with Au revoir, les enfants at a little theater in San Francisco, the Balboa. As you probably know it isn't available on US tape or DVD. I'm not even sure I've seen it, though I remember fondly seeing Au revoir in its first week of showings in Paris. I wanted to see this, but the Balboa is rather remote from where I live and I didn't make it. So, another shrinking window effect. So I'm at home with my Netflix.

But overall, it's been a great career, and a richly varied one, and here is a gay filmmaker who's made it into the mainstream, and still remained gay, and made it back out again. And that's pretty cool.

That's certainly one way to look at it, and you aren't incorrect. I guess Don Roos could also make that claim -- on a smaller scale, of course. He made The Opposite of Sex and then made an Affleck/Paltrow starrer called Bounce (no, I haven't seen it either). And now he's come back with Happy Endings which I reviewed a few days ago.

I was fortunate enough to watch a few early Malle films -- Le Monde du silence (1956); Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1957); Zazie dans le métro (1960) -- in his retro we had here at the Walter Reade. I consider Lacombe Lucien as one of his very best. I hope you get a chance to watch it.

I was quite upset that retrospective didn't come to Chicago, I've still been unable to see The Silent World in any form. Although a restoration has been done on Elevator to the Gallows, and it will receive a limited theatrical re-release, I believe in September (or at least that's when it comes to my city).

I vaguely remember Gerry coming out, and I think I was still too put off by Van Sant's films to check it out, but knowing now that there is another potential masterpiece out there from him, it is certainly going on my list of films to see now.

I will shed some light on your topic of Last Days, but well long day, and I'm not really up for analyzing.

Alas, Lacombe, Lucien stopped showing today without my making it to SF's Richmond Dictrict. But I'll catch it eventually. Maybe I can get a DVD of it in France.

I saw Bounce, and it wasn't much. But The Opposite of Sex was okay. I'm hoping to see Happy Endings but it isn't working out so far. That's an interesting comparison, and I wouldn't defend Van Sant's more mainstream efforts, but I'd say Bounce was more out of gear for Roos than Good Will Hunting, which after all did have personal qualities (on the face of it) being by the then young unknown team of Affleck and Damon, rooted in a location, Southey, etc. But I saw it with a friend from Southey and though he thought they got the accent right, for him the movie was just fluff. I've found a silly website that might be a good dicipline for a verbose chap like me: four-word movie reviews. http://www.fwfr.com/ My fave there for Good Will Hunting: "Pinesol-swabbing Southey smarty." But even if you work at it, it's hard to do a review in four words and that ain't a review. One that is: "Brilliantly spun underdog story." This isn't bad: "Matt plays brat, easy." and here's one a tad more critical: "Genius stuns psychiatrist. Yawn." Now that's good!

L'Asenceur pour l'Echafaud is being revived here too, maybe with Zazie. I will see L'Ascenceur with a friend on Tuesday in downtown Berkeley. But actually I have long had a tape of it. I love all the old stuff by Malle that I'e seen. Have never seen Le Monde du Silence and you were indeed fortunate to see it in the Walter Reade retrospective because there seems to be no DVD of it, even in France.

wpqx--

If you loved Elephant and Last Days, you've gotta see Gerry. Not many people have, yet, it seems, and there were like four people in the theater when I watched it and two of them walked out. I sat with it, and I was real glad I did. That was when I discovered Manohla Dargis, when she was still writing for the LA and not the NY Times -- she liked it, and I thought, this lady is cool. I still consider her a worthy replacement for Elvis Mitchell

Elephant loses none of it's power on DVD.

I can see why the jury gave Van Sant the Palm D'or.
It's shot like a dream, and he captures high school angst perfectly.

It gives a situation like Columbine more humane treatment, it shows us teens (and staff at Watt High) who were just going about their lives, just like the kids at Columbine High School were.

It lulls us along with it's "realistic drama" and then pulls the rug out from under us. In slow motion.

We get to see the same day interpreted thru different sets of eyes to give us a greater scope of what's going down in Anyhigh, U.S.A.

The shower scene shocked me, I must say.
The weird vibes this movie produces...The drunk father, the school on fire, the delivery of the weapons, the tracking shots, the music (very appropriate) and all the other "real life" scenes that were pretty damn unsettling.

I don't know how many times I want to see Elephant again.

Pixote (1981) - Hector Babenco

Finally got to see this film, which I believe was Babenco's first feature, or certainly his breakthrough film. To me it helps to have seen Carandiru. This film is like a prequel to that, taking place slightly earlier, and featuring somewhat younger characters. We can see that the "untouchable" minors of Pixote will become the hardened inmates of Carandiru once they get older.

The story is moving without really being exploitative, which it certainly could have done. Crime is something of a way out, but these kids remain kids. They are not the professional gangsters at the age of 10 that were found in City of God. Instead they're gullible and get fooled easily. And on occasion they really do want to be kids. The absence of family affects them all, and they're ambition is misguided. When one of the gang is discussing what he wants to do with his share of money, it is to buy a .38 so he can shoot and rob people, which he thinks will give him respect. It is not the dream of escaping crime common to other films. Crime is life for them, and that's all they plan on.

Babenco's best film, at least of the four I've seen. Damn good picture.

I don't place Gerry anywhere near Elephant but it was certainly an interesting start for a "rejuvinated" Van Sant.

Interpretation of events through various sets of eyes in Elephant comes from Béla Tarr's Sátántangó. This overlapping 7+ hr masterpiece has had a huge influence on Van Sant. However, I have heard musings that his latest borrows a bit more than what he perhaps intended from Tarr's work.

Pixote is one of my favorite films of the 80's. Not an inch of that film is exploitative, something that can't be said about the otherwise technically brilliant City of God.

Pixote's great.

I don't feel that Gerry is drastically far from the two films that followed it; it certainly has less to offer an audience looking for action and dialogue than Elephant, but so does Last Days. My main point remains, that it's valuable to see all three, and if you really admire one, you must see the rest.

The last films I've seen:

Dominick Moll: With a Friend Like Harry (Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien, 2000).

Harry Balestero is an old schoolmate of Michel (though Michel has forgotten him). They meet in a highway men's room. Harry and his girlfriend wind up staying the night at Michel's summer place with Michel and his wife and kids. Their life will never be the same. One of the sublest and most original horror movies of recent years. With it's haute bourgeoisie accoutrements and assured pacing, With a Friend Like Harry has echoes of Hitchcock and other masters of suspense. But his quiet smugness and increasingly menacing "kind" gestures make Sergi Lopez's Harry a pretty creation.

Re-seen on a Netflix DVD.

Lucas Belvaux: On the Run: Trilogy 1 (Cavale, 2002) The Belgian writer-director also stars as Bruno, the sullen escaped prisoner with revolutionary ideas who sets out to eliminate the people who got him in jail. Not much style, or much fun, in this piece on appearances, but I'll have to reserve judgment till I've seen the rest of the three of which it's a part, each interlocking tale in a different genre. The woman in the piece, Catherine Frot, played the ditsy wife in Klapisch's Un air de famille/Family Resemblences (1996). She looks tired.

Netflix DVD.

Mad Hot Ballroom

(seen in a theater -- still showing, for obvious reasons). This crowd pleaser is one of the best feel-good documentaries of the past couple of years. Watching the charming Dominican kids, I couldn't help remembering Raising Victor Vargas -- and how much I love to dance. This makes me want to go up to 181st street to meet them.