Such a frustrating disappointment

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Elephant is a 2003 film directed by Gus Van Sant, which retells a fictionalized story of the Columbine shooting in 1999. Now the film has divided its viewers. Some say it's a unique film, others say it's pretentious garbage. The film is pretentious garbage.According to some critics and people, they say that this film is supposed to simply let you experience the event. If so, then why is the presentation of the film so dull, devoid of any artistic expressions or creative takes? Why are the only styles used are either shots that follow characters that conclude to nothing in the end? Why does the director only show some green clouds? It's not a f***ing screen saver. The film is truly lifeless, devoid of anything. It has no personality, no sense of purpose or knows what it wants to give.The film made me question a lot of things, but not the shooting. It made me question the dumb choices taken by the director. If the film simply wants to give you an experience, then why do we spend nearly the entire film trying to "build" these boring characters that is damn near impossible to get invested into them? Nothing they say is interesting, or presented in an interesting way. The style of the film is less than standard, so you can't even call it style over substance, because it has no style or substance. It's a pointless film that feels empty and is so egotistical of its self. Some of the shots look nice at best, but not impressive. Sadly, when these nice shots take place, the film takes a few seconds/minutes that feel like an eternity when it presents these shots. It doesn't add any mood, emotion or build-up, so it's pretty pointless.The final shooting, which is supposed to be the main thing about the film, is done with no passion or care. This is the point where it should be tragic and grow emotional, but because you don't care about these dumb characters, you don't care about the final even. In fact, I feel quite bad for laughing at the end because of how terrible the shooting was done. It was shot in a dull way, acted poorly, the dialogue was hilariously bad and some of the killings felt over the top.One last thing I should point out is that the script is mostly improvised, which explains why the dialogue is a piece of crap. None of the characters talk like a normal person you would relate to, or any sort of character you should relate to. Are these characters supposed to be sympathetic? Pure evil? The film doesn't even bother to ask these questions.It is truly a shame because such an interesting concept can work, but not like this. Maybe under the hands of a more talented film maker, and done in a documentary style, it would have been a lot better. But sadly it turned out to be one of the most boring and terrible movies I have ever experience. I felt agony and I wanted to bring the nearest gun to kill myself. 1/10 and I am being generous

This is a fictionalization of the Columbine High School massacre that happened in 1999. The story plods along until the climax of the shootings. When I say plods, I mean plods. Eschewing any attempt at depth, much of what is shown are long takes of kids walking down hallways or across fields. I figured that there would ultimately be some payoff in the story for the tedium of the walks, but no. The tedious waking turns out to be a way to make the movie have feature length. If all of the walking were to be taken out, then what would be left would be much less than sixty minutes.Establishing any motivation for the actions of the two killers is minimal--one of the guys is seen to be a loner and is bullied in one scene. The interests of the guys are: watching Nazi films, playing violent video games, ordering a semi-automatic gun. There is an ambiguous scene that has the two guys naked in a shower kissing. Is that meant to implicate homosexuality as somehow part of the personality of some such killers?In a pivotal scene, one of the shooters confronts the school principal who pleads for his life. The kid says to him that maybe he (the principal) will take complaints more seriously in the future, but then the kid kills him. What kind of complaints was the kid referring to? Would responses to student complaints actually have made a difference? At least not what we see here, which is more of telling of what happens, but not why. Perhaps there will never be a satisfactory answer to why, but, maybe movies like this are part of the answer as to what might be a precipitating cause of some of the events depicted.There is nothing here beyond what most people could imagine. The main reason I can see for the existence of this movie is to exploit the less than admirable human trait of being unable to avoid looking at an accident.

As someone fascinated by Columbine, I've been meaning to watch this movie for a long time; having finally seen it, I must say that Elephant is a bit disappointing for me. I understand that Gus Van Sant is a well-respected director known for his subtle, pseudo-documentary style. I sat down to watch Elephant fully expecting a understated interpretation of Columbine focused on showcasing realistic high school students going about a seemingly normal day. But I found that style tended to precede substance in this film. It's as though the director was so concerned with putting out a stylistically subtle, artistically shot indie film that he neglected crucial aspects like character development, plot, action.You'd think a movie so focused on the activities and interactions of a select few high school students would do a little more in the way of establishing those students as real, multidimensional characters for the audience to empathize with. But all those mundane interactions and conversations tell us little about our focal students. We see snippets, sure: Elias loves photography, John has to act as a parent to his own father, Michelle is insecure about her body. But that's really the extent of it. We know even less about others like Acadia and Bobby, who play no role whatsoever but, for whatever reason, merit their own on-screen title cards displaying their names. Moreover, we see more of these side characters than we see of the gunmen themselves, who have virtually no character development. It's hard to engage an audience through flat characters and their inconsequential activities. If you're going to show us a five-minute shot of a student walking, at least give us a reason to care about him.Or maybe just don't insert five consecutive minutes of walking. That's another flaw here: there's no action at all, even when two students show up to school armed and ready to kill. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no adrenaline junkie. I didn't turn it on expecting a Tarantino- esque gun action sequence. But every death is off screen. The shooting sequences are filmed in such a way that you can't see any of what's going on, just a generic close-up of the killer's blank face. As Alex and Dylan go on their rampage, the reactions of the students are somewhat underwhelming and unrealistic. There's some screaming and running from select students, but none of the widespread panic you'd expect during a high school massacre. John and his father watch from outside with blank expressions as students flee the smoking building. Even more ridiculous is Bobby, the black kid introduced at the last moment and intended to be relevant, who walks calmly down a hallway of running students, watches a girl jump out a window to escape but for some reason doesn't evacuate himself, and finally walks right up to the killer, unarmed, seemingly unconcerned, virtually asking for death.Elephant isn't a bad movie, but I'd definitely say it's overrated. For a film that prides itself in "realism", it strikes me as highly unrealistic. Boring, really. Nothing happens until the last ~20 minutes, and by that point I was a bit peeved to have watched an hour's worth of walking, mundane conversations, film developing, and not much else.

I'm going to give this a two because it is really unbelievably bad. It's not in the same category of bad I would put other best/worst movies I am a fan of. The closest comparison I can make is the opening scene of Birdemic where the camera shows a car driving for an extended period of time while depressing music playing. Then it cuts to a short scene of walking. The amount of walking and panning in Elephant was excessive. I was constantly pausing and checking the clock to see how much longer. If I watched it repetitively like I have Airplane I might be able to catch something subtle I've missed but I don't have the heart or the time. I have trouble submitting reviews because I know people put their hearts and souls into making movies and who am I to criticize. But I felt I had to. With that said, the characters are cliché. I know the event depicted is of a serious nature and feel the characters should not have been reduced to a sort of Breakfast Club derivative.