Review of Last Days (2005) by Danielj. — 15 Nov 2005

A lot of visual beauty and the effect of spying on someone whose brain has gone to mush is kind of captivating for about the first hour. The problem with this movie is that Van Sant's method (I learned from watching the bonus section) is to create 'atmospheres' and then to let his actors improvise within those environments.

But the actors come off in the bonus footage like idiots. Not just stoners, but truly shallow in the case of Lukas Haas whose story in the film about having sex with a hot asian girl with an amazing body while on tour with his band and then brushing her off and writing a song about it was true.

He also talks about his first 'gay sex scene' and how he asked the director to put in some hetero stuff with his character 'to make the sexuality more ambiguous', which just comes off like frat guy-quality homophobia.

So the problem with this film is that if you get a bunch of shallow pretty boy actors and let them supply the content of the film, you get shallow content. The other problem is that at first Michael Pitt is embodying Kurt Cobain, but as soon as the movie introduces him as "Blake", the effect goes away and you feel like you're just watching more of a cliche than a character.

It reduces Cobain to a type, rather than an individual and I think stories about junkie rock stars are pretty played out. The format and aesthetic of this movie ask a lot of your time and concentration, and I feel that the director here, as in Elephant, isn't supplying the audience with enough in the way of content to make it worth it.