You won't be disappointed!

Well Deserved Praise

Lack of good storyline.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

There are pros and cons to docudrama. Gus Van Sant used and misused this approach in Last Days and created a haunting atmosphere. In the long run, it became demanding to watch, not because of adult content or obscenities but exactly because this was a docudrama.Since we all know who this movie was about, it is amazing to see how lawyers influenced Last Days. Apparently a lot of people were unhappy about the plot, so all reference to Kurt Cobain and events surrounding his death have been removed. Still the main character is spitting image of Kurt Cobain and the events depicted correspond to what we've heard from the media.But even without these impressions, Last Days is not something you could watch an enjoy. At times it hasn't been a drama but rather a documentary without much going on, yet this "nothing" got shown in great length. There was some reference to drug use, but even that has only been hinted. Despite the atmosphere that built up, we weren't smarter after the movie. We still only know what media told us about the death of Kurt Cobain.

Rock star resembling Kurt Cobain lurches around his secluded home in the woods, barely interacting with the other young people in the house and fooling around with a shotgun. Writer-director Gus Van Sant examines downtrodden lives (messed-up people who often live in crummy squalor) from such a distance that the bleak surroundings--such as the decaying mansion here--practically look sterile, untouched. This is nothing more than an exercise in camera style, with the technique itself becoming tiresome before the 30-minute mark. In the lead, Michael Pitt, morose and mumbling, has the perfect Cobain coif, yet he is given no actual character to play, any semblance of a screenplay being non-existent. This is the work of a filmmaker interested in bleak, dead-end scenarios--but one without the filmmaking passion to ferret out the questions behind all the hopelessness. NO STARS from ****

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.

The third installation of Gus Van Sant's thematic "Death trilogy", Last Days was a film I came to with very high hopes. Having the day before seen both Paranoid Park and Elephant, two extremely fine films, I expected only the best from the experimental director.Following troubled rock musician Blake through his titular time period, Last Days takes heavy inspiration from Kurt Cobain. Much like Elephant's inspiration, this will instantly reveal the conclusion of the film to just about anyone who encounters any coverage prior to viewing.Almost certainly the most well known of the true stories which gave rise to this trilogy, the suicide of Kurt Cobain is yet another subject which Van Sant has come under controversy for electing to represent. It is important to note, however, that the heavy ties to Cobain do not exclusively mean that he and Blake are one and the same, more that this is Van Sant's interpretation of a period he perceives as entirely immune to objective interpretation. As we have seen develop as perhaps the most important aspect of this trilogy, Van Sant once more offers us poetic visuals, further developing his personal cinematic style, one which is deeply independent and highly unique for so (at least sometimes) mainstream an American director. Probably the best way in which I can summarise my thoughts on Last Days is this: where Elephant was Van Sant identifying everything that was truly great about Gerry—the cinematography, the tension, the ability to show rather than to tell—and adding to this the societal message, the depth, and the emotional involvement which that film lacked, Last Days is the opposite. With Last Days, Van Sant takes the indulgent tracking shots and the apparent sagacity which lacks in genuine meaning and runs amok with it. While Gerry was a deeply flawed film, misusing its dazzlingly beautiful visuals by offering nothing beneath to support them, Last Days is simply empty, a pseudo-artistic "exploration" of a poorly structured character. Even the visual splendour is somewhat reduced, giving hopefuls like me even less to cling to as we hope for something more. Pitt wanders about, occasionally stopping to don a dress or make macaroni, mumbling intensely to himself in an utterly incomprehensible manner. After perhaps half an hour, I started to wonder what was happening. How, after the majesty of Elephant, had Van Sant gone so wrong? Alas, it just carried on in the very same way, Pitt wandering around his nonlinear narrative, me staring in puzzlement at the screen and wondering why this character was so thinly sketched. The characterisation is frankly non-existent, a serious problem given that this is—or at least is supposed to be—a character drama. I have a great deal of patience for slow films, and an unbalanced adoration for recondite ones, but this simply has no method to its madness, nothing whatsoever to say, and no apparent justification for existing. There is one scene, in which Blake loops his instruments and jams with himself, which does something to assuage this onslaught of disappointment. The long take as the camera ever so slowly zooms out films all of this through a window, the vast stone walls a barrier between us and this character, his dark playing and lugubrious wails a brief glimpse into the tortured soul that lies beneath. The scene itself is nothing shot of mesmeric, but it is essentially the only thing of any merit in the film. It's a deep shame that such a wonderful piece of cinema should be featured in so poorly misjudged a mess of a film.Astoundingly disappointing as a follow-up to Elephant, Last Days follows on the nonsensical navel-gazing of Gerry by multiplying it, and by giving us fewer pretty pictures to look at to distract us from the unfortunate lack of meaning. Were it not for the fact that I've already seen and loved Paranoid Park, his feature to follow this, it would be a long time before I felt ready to trust in Gus Van Sant again.