Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

tjwcreations I knew very little about this film before watching but now having seen Elephant I am extremely glad (and slightly overwhelmed). The film has a style and rhythm that flows beautifully with the long, slow moving shots with mostly improvised dialogue. The choice to use a 4:3 aspect ratio and Gus Van Sant's beloved 16mm film, is clever and is nice to do with how it looks etc. but it is also perfect for the feel of a compact school hallway and the slow pace of everyday school life.The acting is all round very convincing, pretty impressive as some times actors will be talking for a good five minutes with no cuts away and most of it improvised and this is all before you get to what is really great about Elephant. The interlocking stories are very clever and interesting, the final sequence is amazingly down beat and manages to capture the horror, but never glorify, a school shooting. But the camera is truly the master of the film.The camera lingers like a character, we follow characters in long beautiful tracking shots never missing anything, we see how everything is the same, we learn about the environment, the people, the school before having it all ripped away. I could write on and on about Elephant about balance of style and substance being perfect etc. but in the end it is a deeply sad film with very important issues that it doesn't rub in your face.One the best movies of the 2000s and if anything very important for any teenager to see.9/10

bandw 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.

SnoopyStyle It's a regular high school in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Elias is an artistic photographer. John seems happy except for his drunk dad. Nathan and Carrie are the hot couple. Acadia is a gay activist. Michelle is an awkward nerd. Brittany, Jordan and Nicole are chatty girls. It's a normal day until Eric and Alex show up armed for mayhem. They're outsiders struggling with bullying. They play first person shooter games, watch Hitler on TV, buy guns off the internet and are possibly gay.Gus Van Sant has obviously taken inspiration from the Columbine massacre. He has a cast of young amateur newbies to play the kids. The only recognizable face is Matt Malloy who plays the principal Mr. Luce. I like the regular kids approach. I even like the the hypnotic minimalist style. I always love approaching the same event from different points of view. It's a bit slow but it's kind of interesting. My biggest problem is the portrait of the killers. This is fictional but the killers have to feel real. This is such an important part of the movie. I rather Eric & Alex be an enigma than ending up feeling false in any way. Gus Van Sant should have left their backstory out of the movie. The movie needs to shed an insightful light on the killers or else it should leave them as mysteries. There are some docudramas based on true events that are more compelling.

Python Hyena Elephant (2003): Dir: Gus Van Sant / Cast: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Timothy Bottoms: Gus Van Sant's vision of the Columbine massacre with a title that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Perhaps it is symbolic but at a glance it certainly reflects nothing. The screenplay follows a variety of students through interlocking stories in order to give routine and purpose to their lives. Everyone is sharply written and observed and all will be effected when two students dressed in camouflage enter the school and produced heavily armed weapons that they obtained so easily. There is a real crisis at hand regarding the raising of children. The two terrorist in this film see killing as fun. We witness a variety of characters who all share similar fate. Are we so far into our routine that we take for granted a chance for its interruption? Extremely depressing film with an abrupt ending. There are poorly focused camera shots including a long shot behind someone's head while they play the piano. Gus Van Sant gained favour with films such as Good Will Hunting and To Die For but after the pathetic and unwanted remake of Psycho his career plummeted. He will likely recuperate but not likely with an independent film of this nature. Elephant is very low budget but ambitious in its message, acting and an attempt for a director to move onto bigger things. Score: 5 / 10