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July 22, 2005
SGN.org
Volume 33
Issue 29

Saturday, Nov 21, 2009 12:28

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The good (5 X 2), the not bad (Last Days) and the ugly (The Island)

The good (5 X 2), the not bad (Last Days) and the ugly (The Island)
Three new films open this weekend by Derich Mantonela - SGN A&E Writer Last Days - Gus Van Sant's introspective take on Curt Cobain's end (at the Neptune & the Meridian) If you liked Gay Portland director Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Gerry, dreamy, semi-surreal, vaguely erotic meanderings into the psyches of "troubled, sensitive, alienated" young men, you need to see Last Days, his subjective, semi-biographical interpretation of the mind of Seattle superstar rockster Kurt Cobain in the hours before he blew it away in Madrona with a shotgun in 1994 (can it really be that long ago?). Sprinkling snippets of newspaper-type trivia into the mix (Cobain dons a housedress, wanders around his ramshackle mansion in the woods, tries out some rock riffs on his guitar, hosts - or more or less ignores - his various houseguests and groupies, some of whom engage in perfunctory sex, homo and otherwise), Van Sant mostly imposes his doomed hero's stream-of-consciousness and passive, doped-up, zombie fatalism upon a static background which presumably includes us, his audience. It's a movie about a state of mind, a "visual interior monolog" of a man whose life and whose brain cells were shutting down. A tragic loss of a brilliant, ultimately thrown-away, talent. Like it or lump it. Those are the only two choices here. 5 X 2 - Ozon's scenes from a (collapsing) marriage (at the Varsity) Plain and simple, if you are a cinephile you need to see any film made by France's Francois Ozon, and his latest, 5 X 2 (concisely described as "five scenes from a disintegrating marriage, shown in reverse chronological order") is mainstream Ozon if not in one of his more challenging or avant-garde modes. Marion (the alluringly vulnerable Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss, well-cast as a plodding yuppie) weave through the typical pitfalls of struggling young marrieds in an urban hell which the French seem to have copied from America. The marriage fails, and we never really learn why, except that it seems that both parties don't try very hard to save it. And though it's Marion who succumbs to a foxy American, on her wedding night, no less (well, Gilles, drunk and snoring on the wedding bed, had failed to do his duty to her), it's Gilles who seems the self-serving, and (worse yet) duller half. Ozon's scenes are meticulously played out and radiate a merciless, almost sterile beauty, but this time he gives us too little in the way of compelling characters or their motivations for us to hold onto and to care about. The Island - Stupidly, insultingly, boringly baaaaaad (playing everywhere) Hack action/adventure director Michael Bay's The Island, a mindless summer sci-fi-endless-chase-scene potboiler proves one thing for sure: Scarlett Johansson's remarkable streak of appearing in good (or at least passable) movies has come to a loud, crashing halt. Here she embarrasses herself by her very presence. Ewan McGregor we can excuse, he's used to being in bad movies. This is one of the most insultingly stupid, pointless, ugly, moronic films of all time. Yet you may find yourself riveted to your seat by the sheer awfulness of it (amazing, really - I sat there transfixed as if brainwashed for nearly ninety minutes before I bolted). An utter waste of millions of dollars, and of the minds of anyone exposed to it.