the last movie i saw

I love catching late movies. There's something satisfying about slipping into a ten or eleven o'clock show just as the light goes down. It's also one of the only ways to go the movies without buying tickets ahead of time in the city (i.e. planning). At least, that's what I'd found to be the case until last night. I tried to see No Country for Old Men, on a whim, but got to the theater (that awful multiplex at Union Square) to find it sold out. It was one of those "everyone in New York has the same idea" moments. I'm dying to see this one, it's gotten the best reviews of any film this year and its impossible to pass up the Coens in serious mode (none of this Intolerable Cruelty nonsense). It looks like a throwback to their first film, Blood Simple, a hardboiled Texas noir, which is one of my favorite films.
So, I came home with a shrug and decided to watch Last Days, Gus Van Sant's poetic rumination on grunge icon Kurt Cobain. It's a strikingly unusual film ... it feels almost experimentally taciturn, non-linear and rambling. This makes it a tough sit for some, but others (myself in the front row) find it mesmerizing and beautiful. As the Cobain figure, Michael Pitt (so compelling in The Dreamers) stutters in and out of the frame with a soiled mop of blond hair and slurs the incoherent musings of a tragic rock figure. He's hardly audible, but that's the point. He doesn't know what he's saying either.
More so than any other filmmaker, Van Sant has the ability to capture wayward youth culture with an eye more endearing than critical. Look at Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho ... both neo-classics about drug-tainted youth culture on the run. Last Days captures the spirit of these earlier ventures and nearly wipes away the stench left by Elephant, Van Sant's miscalculated exploration of a Columbine-like school shooting, which was aesthetically vibrant but suffered unforgivable narrative sloppiness.
The real joy of this film comes from the small moments that will make any rock lover swoon ... Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon shows up for a quickie scene, another character sings along with the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs." And, if that hasn't won you over, a few shaggy-haired hipsters, complete with square-framed glasses and wool ski caps, climb into bed together. Talk about swooning.