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Last Days
Picturehouse


5.6

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 40 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for language and some sexual content

Starring Michael Pitt, Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green, Nicole Vicius, Ricky Jay, and Thadeus A. Thomas

Last Days is filmmaker Gus Van Sant's fictional meditation on the inner turmoil that engulfs a brilliant, but troubled musician in the final hours of his life. (Picturehouse)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Musical
WRITTEN BY:	Gus Van Sant
DIRECTED BY:	Gus Van Sant
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 25, 2005 Theatrical: July 22, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	97 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Nominated, Golden Palm, 2005 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Village Voice Dennis Lim

The brilliant concluding chapter in the death trilogy that inspired Gus Van Sant's artistic rebirth.

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.

100

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

One of this year's indisputably great films.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Last Days is a definitive record of death by gradual drug exhaustion. After the chills and thrills of "Sid & Nancy" and "The Doors," here is a movie that sees how addicts usually die, not with a bang but a whimper. If the dead had it to do again, they might wish that, this time, they'd at least been conscious enough to realize what was happening.

Newsweek David Ansen

A hauntingly beautiful tone poem.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Despite all of Van Sant's narrative feints and coy protestations, the audience is left with one searing memory after seeing Last Days, and that memory is of Cobain. Was he, as Gordon's character suggests at one point, simply a rock-and-roll cliche? Or was he a visionary genius, as the name of Pitt's character implies?

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The poetry of Last Days has a stoned grandeur.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In its unstated cynicism, beauty, and self-pity, Last Days fits the myth of Cobain like a torn pair of jeans.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result is a movie that seems not quite real and yet never false but somehow partakes of both -- rather like the prospect of death.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's an experimental film about a sensational event, placing tragedy in the context of the dulling normality of human life and resisting easy interpretation, just as did the inexplicable death of Kurt Cobain.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

What Last Days offers is a blank and narrative-free, but pitch-perfect, dreamscape on which to project your own personal ruminations on Kurt, fame, whatever, nevermind. If you have none, you're on your own.

Slate David Edelstein

An extraordinarily potent brew.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's definitely NOT a conventional biopic about Kurt Cobain. (Nor, as its title oddly suggests, is it about the demise of writer-director Van Sant.) It's a tone poem, an elliptical, fictionalized meditation about the ill-fated rock 'n' roll superstar.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The glacial pacing may put some people off, but it also has a hypnotic quality. And some viewers might find it fascinating to be a voyeur into someone's tortured psyche.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The story is pure speculation, Van Sant's fantasy on what may have happened during those final days of self-isolation, but he loads the film with distinctive imagery.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

There is a method to its madness, since the madness here is really Cobain's. Last Days mythologizes his suicide as a haunting act of fulfillment: the consummation of a life that had already ceased to be.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It's like a walking tour inside the head of a deeply troubled, deeply talented young man, where most of the systems have already shut down.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Using long takes, largely improvised dialogue and an increasingly out-of-joint time frame, Van Sant chronicles the final hours of fictional but Cobain-like rock star Blake.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Van Sant and his star, Michael Pitt, together with the cinematographer Harris Savides, set out to do a somber, rigorously distanced study of a man drained of all resources, and slowly though inexorably approaching his end. That they have done exactly what they meant to do is notable.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

In the end, it feels like a life aestheticized, not examined.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

In the leading role Michael Pitt is neither good nor less than good. He simply mopes along druggedly for the film's ninety-seven minutes. Van Sant's inculcation of this non-performance is clearly part of his dogged negativism, his intent to purge his film.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

Last Days shouldn't be half as engrossing as it turns out to be.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Van Sant, following "Gerry" and the superb "Elephant," is on the same elliptical quest. His journey is labored but undeniably hypnotic.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Van Sant has mastered this kind of driftingly contemplative imagery and his layered soundscapes would make Sonic Youth proud (of course, Kim Gordon makes an appearance), but the introduction of other characters fracture the film's greatest asset, its lonely first-person atmosphere.

Film Threat Greg Bellavia

A victory for ambitious filmmaking if not always a successful attempt at character study.

Empire Steve O'Hagan

A beguiling work of some beauty, this is a further move into a world of hypnotic, observational cinema for Gus Van Sant. But in the end, the detached style has the power to alienate as much as to enthral.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Van Sant's refusal to delve into his subject in anything but an abstract way renders the movie pointless and frustrating -- a lyrical, lovely tone poem, signifying little.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

While Last Days succeeds as a nature documentary, Van Sant fails to penetrate human nature. The result is a portrait without a face.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

It's unclear if Van Sant intends to inspire guilt; here, as elsewhere, he is exasperatingly abstruse. And in this striving to not say too much, he ends up not saying much of anything at all.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

How can one defend this prolonged mumble of a motion picture? Well, some of the motion has a hypnotizing grace.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's a meticulous nest of interlocking elements, not at all haphazard. But in its unrelieved bleakness and singularity of vision, it supplies very little in the way of conventional movieness.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Result is dead-on depiction of the hedonistic rock lifestyle, punctuated by sequences of haunting beauty but also quasi-religious imagery that borders on tacky.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Yet music, the one thing that might have given the film some kick, is de-emphasized, with only two songs sneaking into the picture.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A film about a junkie rock musician, played by Michael Pitt at his most narcissistic, doing nothing in particular for the better part of 97 minutes isn't my idea of either a good time or a serious endeavor.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The bottom line of Last Days seems to be, fame's a bitch. Yes, Gus - now start making movies again that tell stories, please.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In trouble from its first minutes.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 40 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andrew G gave it a2:
It's always funny to me that meandering crap like this is praised as genius. Watch the "making of" feature on the dvd. They literally just made crap up as they went along. It may be "incredibly liberating" for the actors involved, but it makes for an unbearably tedious and painfully boring viewing experience. Gus Van Sant is horribly overrated.

Brock F. gave it a0:
Terrible. Perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation."

Laura P. gave it a10:
Was an awesome film with great music!

Erik L. gave it a2:
This film is way too loosely constructed and it is pretentious to overlook the fact that it does little to captivate the audience. Michael Pitt's performance mostly consists in grunts and moans and is nothing to be proud of. The religious references throughout are puzzling and it feels like Van Sant is trying to make the average viewer see this as a film about a rockstar evading salvation until his untimely death. Formally speaking, this is not a movie about Cobain, and should not be seen as such. It is a fictional account of the life of an artist similar to Cobain, and as such is not biographically accurate. From the formalist perspective we also have no evidence that he is a junkie. These external interpretations detract from the essential lack of any true cohesion, since the entire film could be summed up in seven minutes. It is another silly attempt by Van Sant to create a film about an event without researching the event; in the nineties his work was excellent but lately he has been trying way too hard to appeal to the sycophantic art critic who actually does not have much of an aesthetic sense. The only redeeming features are Harmony Korine's chat about D&D with Jerry Garcia and when Blake (not Kurt) falls off the stretcher. I can understand people feeling a certain need to praise a film about Nirvana but this isn't what Van Sant set out to do. It is a loosely-constructed showcase of cinematography accompanied Moore and Westerkamp's excellent soundscape, but the plot itself is weak and boring. There are better things to do than to waste 97 minutes on this film.

John M. gave it a10:
Wonderful movie, well crafted and seems to clear up some of the mystery surrounding Kurt, although it states at the end the movie it is a work of fiction, it is based on Kurts last days.

Gavin M. gave it a0:
i seriously can't believe that so many critics rated this film so highly. i thought it was one of the most boring things i've ever seen and can't think of one single redeemable feature. if it says anything, it's that being a drug addict on the verge of suicide is dull as dishwater. there, now you know - don't waste your time watching it.

Chad S. gave it a9:
"Last Days" reminded me of the anger that greeted Bob Woodward's "Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi" from the SNL star's friends because the scribe depicted their pal in a one-dimensional manner. He was a drug addict. Director Gus Van Sant, who seems to be in a "I can be more European than you" contest with Jim Jarmusch, unfairly shows "Blake"(Michael Pitt) when he's at his most pathetic, his last days. "Last Days" is admirable for not being a traditional biopic like "Walk the Line", or "Ray", in which we see the artist's rise and fall, but by effacing the rise, this film must be very dispiriting and off-putting to those who knew the killer of big hair. Nevertheless, "Last Days" is brilliant in implicating Blake's friends(a veiled reference to Courtney Love) for the late singer's death by not doing anything. Shortly before Blake performs a song, he's badgered by a houseguest who wants help in the music biz, seemingly oblivious to his connection's drug-addled state. Interestingly, this leech seems to be suggestive of Rivers Cuomo, and his song "Across the Sea". "Last Days" is no doubt, a downer, but an essential document of how unglamorous drugs really are.

Last Days Picturehouse

Last Days
Picturehouse