Last Days

2005 movie

Plot: 12/20

Plot: The last extraordinarily dull days of a musician who sort of looks like Kurt Cobain. He swims, eats cereal, messes with a guy who works for the yellow pages, wanders around, avoids phone calls. That's pretty much it.

Like Elephant and Gerry, this is impossibly dreary from the opening scene. The languid pace and the long, still shots (a cup, an abandoned room, leaves blowing) are the main contributors, but knowing this is at least loosely based on Cobain and therefore knowing exactly how it will end doesn't help matters. It's almost entirely plotless, and the lead doesn't do or say anything to force the audience to connect with him or really care what's going on. In fact, he barely has any lines of dialogue, and most of that is mumbled stream-of-consciousness ramblings. So although parts of this are artistically shot, this ultimately is just a really frustrating ninety minutes that I wished I had done something else with.