Watch Last Days For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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.

This movie is pretty bad, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Gus Van Sant is a guy I really hate because his movie EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES ruined one of the best books I ever read. (Read the book by Tom Robbins, it's amazing.)So I assumed going in that Van Sant meeting Kurt Cobain was going to be a typical Van Sant massacre, a Bambi Meets Godzilla orgy of artistic self-indulgence with Gus doing Kurt "his way." And I was right. But strangely, if you give this movie a chance it's not all that bad. The condescending, one-note story line, (helpless, fragile, beautiful boy dies slowly while drainers, users, liars, and cheats circle like vultures), is rendered poetic and even poignant by the sheer artistry of the camera work and the striking visual images. It's a great achievement, in a way. Gus Van Sant can convey despair better with a single shot of tall grass than another director could with ten pages of dialogue. You have to give him credit, in a way.Lost in all the dreamy doom and damnation, however, is the disturbing sense that Gus really doesn't know much about Kurt Cobain . . . other than that he was a beautiful boy who died. (And therefore the perfect object of desire?) Even though Michael Pitt (later to become a legend as Jimmy Darmody in HBO's BOARDWALK EMPIRE) gives an incredibly charismatic and nuanced performance, there's nothing here to suggest the dynamic energy of a charismatic and rebellious dynamo who changed the music world forever. Whatever music you hear is only to underline the despair, not the talent.Meanwhile, the outside world, (the squares, the straights, and always and above all the women) are dismissed as irrelevant and grotesque, monsters who just don't love our beautiful boy enough. This is sheer laziness. The cheap shots at Mormons and traveling salesmen would have been stale on a vaudeville stage one hundred years ago. But Van Sant can get away with it, because by God he's a real artist with a dreamy touch. All that art in the service of so much self-indulgence.

The theme/plot/point of this movie simply doesn't work as some kind of obscure art-flick. Gus Van Sant uses the exact same framework as he did in 'Elephant': Long shots of boring everyday things that everyone does.The very big difference however, is that it worked very well in Elephant. The seemingly trivial shots of everyday happenings worked as a contrast to the disaster that would eventually come in the end. (And this isn't a spoiler because if you're gonna watch Elephant, you know it's about a school shooting.) Showing the young children interact with one another and their families for the entire movie made sense to give off just how unexpected and horrible the event must have felt.In this movie however, it's really just stupid and doesn't make for anything than a really boring film that you regret giving a chance. Absolutely nothing happens during the entire movie and then he dies. That's it. Im not exaggurating either, all we see is long shots of "Cobain" stumbling around looking druggy. He barely ever talks and when he does he just mumbles incoherently, there is no insight into his mind, he just looks doped up and then he suddenly dies. It's really just a terrible terrible disappointment and a failure of cinema."An introspective artist who is buckling under the weight of fame, professional obligations and a mounting feeling of isolation" is a very interesting topic for a movie. The right thing for Van Sant to do would have been to actually include dialogue with psychological insight into the mind of Kurt Cobain and really bring us into his head and what he is going through. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to do that because there are plenty of diaries, biographies and journal entry's that you can draw from to give some kind of a understanding into his problems with fame and himself.But no. Instead he chose to do something that is just wrong on every concievable level. Im not going to say that he chose to do something cheap, because I have more respect for him as an artist than that. I don't think he threw together a shitty movie just for the sake of it. But misguided? Poor judgment of how to treat the subject matter? Completely. 1/10.

Never before have i been angered so much by the reviews of other people that I have felt the need to add what I think.I have read time and time again how this movie is boring, or it is a blatant rip off of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Last day's is a fictional account of the last days of Kurt Cobains life set in a different location to where Kurt actually lived and died. And the fact that the main character is called Blake in inconsequential. What this movie actually is in my mind is a true piece of gonzo film making, Gus has taken a well known event and put his own spin on it, from his own imagination. Look at Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, that is a true story which has been woven with Hunter S. Thompsons imagination. Even the main character Raole Duke is clearly Hunter himself. Last Days is the same concept. I read someone say about Michael Pitt mumbling, well Kurt was well known for mumbling, so how is that bad acting?Pitt captures the spirit of Kurt Cobain perfectly not only does he understand the role completely but he delivers it so well that for an hour and a half I felt like i was watching a ghost. facially he may not be 100% Kurt, in fact he is slightly better looking but this isn't a look alike show. If you want to see the image of Kurt Cobain go and watch an interview with him or a documentary!There are a lot of hidden hints at things that maybe only Nirvana fans will understand. The tin Blake digs up I believe is meant to represent his stash of drugs. The drug use is implied. The hospital wrist band is a nod to the stint Kurt spent in rehab before escaping shortly before his death and the green house is an exact replica of the room above the garage at the Cobain house in which Kurt actually died.In short I believe that this movie is not just cast well it is a work of art. Not every one is going to like it, and clearly most people do not understand it.

"An official selection in the 2005 Cannes Film festival, 'Gus van Sant's Last Days' is inspired by the final hours of Kurt Cobain. The film introduces us to Blake (Michael Pitt), a brilliant, but troubled musician. Success has left him in a lonely place, where livelihoods rest on his shoulders and old friends regularly tap him for money and favors. The film follows Blake through a handful of hours spent in and near his wooded home… a fugitive from his own life," according to the DVD sleeve synopsis.What many people didn't see in the death of Mr. Cobain was that he succumbed more as the result of a mental breakdown than the drug use that aggravated this condition. Cobain had reached the point in life, after nirvana, when you realize other people in your life are there more for what you have than for who you are. After parting with family and original friends, we gravitate to people who fulfill selfish needs. When you realize everyone around you is there primarily for your money or abilities, it's a shock.The Doors of Perception are opened.I know.It isn't just the - been there, done that - smacking bugs that aren't there, putting the cereal box in the refrigerator, pouring the cheese pouch in hot water, or getting in the wrong underwear… it's the isolation.This is the best aspect of "Last Days" - you see it as Blake wanders about his estate. He blankly ignores friends and acquaintances. He unsuccessfully attempts relating to strangers. They are all around to suck away our lives - with the possible exception, in this (strange) case only, being a couple of door-to-door Jesus salesmen. The latter are a step in the salvation made clear by the film's end - which is the least best aspect of "Last Days". And, by the way, Harris Savides takes beautiful pictures.******* Last Days (5/13/05) Gus Van Sant ~ Michael Pitt, Lukas Haas, Scott Patrick Green, Asia Argento