Last Night (1999)

Brilliant and touching

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Sometimes a movie doesn't necessarily have to tell you everything what it's about, simply just how it can go about the details and characters in its story. Case in point, Don McKellar's Canadian knocking-on-Apocalypse's-door flick, Last Night. Throughout the film, I was wondering if there would come a point where the revelation as to why or how the End of the World was coming around. There isn't any, or at least something that has a clear definition. But there are eerie signs of something just 'off', and it comes with the mere presence of the sun: at first I wasn't thrown off by the sun being out at 6 PM, even 7 PM (the time-span for Last Night is 6 hours, 6 PM to 12 AM on the dot)... but the sun doesn't set, it just stays there and doesn't go away. Now that's scary - and certainly convenient for a budgetary perspective.This is a low-budget movie that takes the apocalypse as something serious, but not in every single moment. In fact McKellar's approach is to make this at times almost 'quirky', eccentric, and even awkward comedy. At one point Patrick, character McKellar himself plays, is having a big dinner with his family and some old family friends. The mother starts to cry at the table, but no one really goes to console her or to say anything, they just keep on eating the turkey and lamb she's prepared - this is the kind of scene I might expect on the TV show Louie, where misery turns out to be uproarious comedy all based on the timing and the personality of the characters in this dreadful situation (in other words it IS a serious moment, but funny because of the reactions and how people feel about one another in that moment). And there's a whole sub-plot with a character who has been, over two months, going through sexual conquests like a check-list... and he finally approaches his friend Patrick about being a, uh, part of that.The main thrust of the story is how Patrick and Sandra (played by Sandra Oh, no name change apparently) go about their last 6 hours, with some assorted characters drifting in and out like Sarah Polley as one of Patrick's disaffected teenage siblings, and David Cronenberg as a bureaucrat going about his last business in a giant office to call people in this city to tell them about the gas staying on until 12 PM, with pretty much every call being a voicemail. But it's less about the story of it than just following these people and finding how they deal with this despair, or not deal with it, and while some go out in the streets and loot and kill and pillage (the film opens with Sandra's car being flipped over as she goes into an empty store to get some items for no good reason at all except it's apocalypse time, better flip some cars and stuff).There is some dramatic power here too, though in small doses and in large part coming from Sandra Oh's performance (I'd forgotten how good she can be, such as in Sideways or on the HBO show Arliss, where she was good enough for me to remember decades on). She carries a lot of weight just by the nature of her circumstance: she has to find her husband so they can carry out their simple plan together at the stroke of midnight - not being able to find a car makes things further complicated, and Patrick makes interesting by how he reacts to her plight. He's not someone who is a super-take-charge kind of guy, but he's not about to sit in the corner with his family and give up either; he's the sort to approach everyone with some decency, even in the midst of befuddlement (i.e. being approached for sex by a male friend, in a sort of 'well, it's on my list and all' sort of rationale).At times I wasn't sure if McKellar was great for the part he wrote for himself, but at other times I don't know if anyone else could play off the awkward tension and sense of sympathy (and empathy) he carries across. He gets good work out of everyone here, most notably Cronenberg - always an underrated actor - as the man who always followed the clock and still is following it until his end (my favorite scene in the film is when he is met with a young man with a gun in his hand, who isn't sure if he can shoot him, though he may just do that, one of those moments that FEELS so real and raw).This is not to say every moment in the film entirely works, or that every attempt to be funny in its soft-cringe like manner is effective, and it actually takes a few minutes early on to gather some momentum. But there's a rhythm to it that is unique, lines like the one in the summary above that come from the heart, and there's a constant sense of 'let's try something you may not have seen before with a 'This is The End' story, down to its ambiguity around why things are ending (or for how long), and some of it comes down to it being so darn... Canadian. You may never see another apocalyptic movie with so many polite people!

Don McKellar directs/wrote/stars in one small movie that asks us... what is REALLY important? The world is about to end (how is irrelevant) and we follow a (seemingly) random bunch of people as they fill their last hours.On one level they all want to make dreams/desires/fantasies they've held onto happen. Our main character, Patrick Wheeler is caught between fulfilling his parents plans and his own.I don't want to give too much of this simple, beautiful and heartfelt movie away, but I think it boils down to a question of opening ourselves up - to be less alone - and to let love in. I think that one thing Mr. McKellar is trying to say is that the power of love - true love (NOT lust) will get us through - no matter what the obstacle.I've seen this movie several times, and am the last person to be swayed by big Hollywood films that try to "steer" you to "feel" for their characters. Last Night is NOT an action picture. It moves slowly, and builds to an ending that never fails to bring some tears to my eyes. I hope you enjoy it is much as I do.

Hello I read one commenter's comments (circa 1999) and have to agree with them, he/she didn't understand the movie at all and is clearly appreciative of the hit-me-over-the-head with the message film school. This is a quiet, uplifting, introspective investigation of our own psyches. And if anyone truly believes that humanity is going to gather together in a quiet sense of community at The End, they haven't been reading this news. While there are pockets of ideal humans living life the way they might in Northern Exposure, mob mentality rules when run by fear and adrenaline as the primary fuel for turning the page of tomorrow and find the book after page 1998 is blank. The film's core ingredient is the simple stimulation of, in witnessing a cross-section of possible life's end scenarios, the equally simple question -- What Would I Do if I knew the world was coming to an end, e.g., October 1, 2008? Not the terrorist attack on the community, but the end-sign in the cosmological equation... THAT, for me at least, is the point of the film. And very very few film productions succeed in creating that sort of personal, visceral, intimately reactive response. If any viewer didn't feel it to the core, I am truly sorry for your loss. --rbnewsnapa--

You will never forget the final scene of this film. It is still fresh in my mind a decade later.As I watched it, I was in denial. I expected an ending like Lester Del Ray's the Big Eye where the catastrophe was only near, but the scientists had to decided not to let the world know, hoping it would cause some sort of spiritual renewal.During the Cuban Missile Crisis, as a teenager, I was completely convinced we would not survive. The nuclear sirens went off. Our radio was dead. I just made my bed and went out on a huge rock to watch the view of the harbour. I sat quietly to wait the nukes. So the calm accepting behaviour in the movie did not strike me as implausible.Further in 1985 I got HIV and was told I would not likely live more than a year. But I had so much to accomplish! I just buried myself in work. A sword of Damocles is just an incentive to get on with whatever it was you wanted to do with your life. So you have the guy attempting to have one of every possible type of sex as his life goal. You have people suddenly getting honest about what they want, rather than living to please others.The impending annihilation is a device that gives every scene unbearable intensity and urgency. Don't miss this film!