Interesteg What makes it different from others?

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

tvbob-1 Maybe. But these characters are just plopped right into the middle of the story and we find no reason to really care about them. Everything seems to revolve around a disco club. Well, we get that. The movie is called a romance. Kind of. But comedy? Ummm. No.The dancers are silent while we are privy only to the quiet conversations of the characters (about whom I guess we are supposed to care). A nice technique the director uses to get the story across.But the plodding movement and development of the plot drags. Are you looking to doze off? Last Days of Disco might be your perfect antidote.

jakob13 Disco died 40 odd years or so. Wilt Stillman's 'The Last Days of Disco' went public almost 20 years ago. If you remember the heady days of disco, Stillman's film is a pale ghost of those days. The real deals of the short life of disco that gay liberation and the drug culture and the turning of society's back on the long war in Vietnam, the mean days of Nixon and the fear that the best days of America had gone away. In way, Don McLean's 'American Pie' says it all in a way. The script poorly frame the period from putting its raw,rude face to the days of disco. The story narrowly focus on mostly self-centered 'golden youth' fall in and out of bed. Stillman lifts the veil of a group of recent university graduates, who come to New York to find a career, a husband or a wife and find a way to hook up for the night (and perhaps longer) for a roll in the hay. The young men are from Harvard,the women from a sister (Ivy League) school. Parents subsidize the women who cannot make ends meet, working as readers in a publishing house. Now if you know anything about New York in those heady days, rents were affordable,cheap restaurants... The group of friends of 'Last Days of Disco' are children the easy classes;they are accustomed to a life style and privileges that do not mirror the daily life of the working class, the lower middle classes and the like. Obliquely in the world of disco this 'golden youth' cuts obliquely through the prism of money, sex, marriage,greed and guilt and power. In a way, it naively paints a picture of suburban, well-heeled young people's fall from dignity...momentarily at least. Stillman offered a break through role for Chloe Sevigny who emerges scarred but successful. Kate Beckinsale seems born to the role of spoiler, who smashes all friendship if a rival at work or for a bed mate stand in her way. She plays the innocent when deliberately she blurts out Sevigny's character has the clap, even those the girls share a flat in the upper east side. The men are dismal but for one a lawyer who chase rainbows and are superficial,albeit Harvard graduates. Society then called them' yuppies' (upwardly mobile professionals). They foreshadowed the nest generation, in image and the terror of reality that at the end of film finds them at the labor exchange looking for work, but not Sevigny who begins to climb the world of publishing ladder to success. But the film never conveys the hopelessness that the millennials experience, no future, a life inferior to a style mum and dad and grandparents enjoyed. Stillman creates a disco that is a pale shadow of say a Studio 54; it is a toothless tiger of the days of disco: no hit of ubiquitous use of drugs, the wild abandon of sex in the loos. The absence of gays, beautiful people, the blacks and Latins who gave the disco days,the biting taste and lust. The saving grace is the music. A potpourri of the hits of Disco that set the feet tapping and gives you envy to stand up and dance. a And possibly in a reverie, dreaming that discover died or went away. And perhaps it didn't for you who went to a discotheque. Today in fast food burger spots, they pipe in the songs of Disco, as you chew your burger or sip your soft drink. The film offers no frisson, no shudder of delight. And there is no hint of AIDS that inhabited the discotheques, among other venues.

Rodrigo Amaro The plausible reason the Disco's gone in the 1980's, the period portrayed in the movie, was that people needed something different, something that would define a new era with new songs, new groups of people and many other things. Disco was becoming an corny attitude in the 1980's. Now we're entering in the movie. The reason given by the writer and director (this is my opinion based on the way I saw what was showed on the screen) Whit Stillman why Disco was through is that everybody focused on their work, they didn't have much time to go party, to dance and everybody's frustrated in their relationships (sexual relations and/or not helpful friends). Here we met all sort of characters, liars, arrogant, stressed, non trustful at all, but lacked one to make this movie nicer: the likable character. Where's it? Where was it? Why a friendly and nice, she or he, didn't appear in the whole movie? I didn't liked any of the characters and even the one I liked it in the beginning, turn out be a jerk.The ensemble cast is overwhelming. Chlöe Sevigny ("Boys Don't Cry"), Kate Beckinsale ("The Aviator"), Mackenzie Astin ("The Evening Star"), Robert Sean Leonard ("Dead Poets Society"), David Thornton ("Alpha Dog"), Matt Keeslar ("Splendor"), Chris Eigeman (I didn't remembered any other work with him but he's got a tremendous job in this movie), Matt Ross ("American Psycho") and Jennifer Beals ("Flashdance"). But none of them has a likable character. It's almost impossible to relate to one of them. The story itself was boring. People come and go out of the blue and their motivations on doing things are unfunny, ruthless and without a single care to bring the audience to the experience. The female characters are completely dead inside, talk to much and overreact to a simple touch of a stranger, or look into someone in the eyes and make an character judgment simply calling him as gay or non trustful. The ideological aspects in this sad movie doesn't work. If we're watching a movie that the main plot is to tell about the last days of disco why we're seeing people who aren't having fun, aren't dancing (dance in this movie was not convincing) and their only preoccupation is how to pay the rent? Only the discussion between "The Lady and The Tramp" was effective and kind of funny. I'm giving 5 stars to it because it was not a case of bad acting, and not even bad directing. The songs played in the movie are quite good but it lacked joyful moments where it could be played in a memorable way. The main problem is an story with no positive characters. In the middle of "The Last Days of Disco" there's a conversation between Kate and Chlöe and one of their bosses about how to make a best-seller's book. And the response of their boss is partially right and the writer of this movie should have thought about it and include some nice characters in it. Then this would be a hit! 5/10

jay393 This is a much better movie than a casual glance at existing reviews would indicate. It's already a cult classic -- take a look at the prices for OOP copies on Amazon -- and it provides a picturesque look at some of the wretched excesses of the end of the disco era. When it comes to understanding the American experience in the twentieth century, there are important parallels between the Roaring 'Twenties and 'Seventies. Both eras ended with a kind of hangover from the initial exuberance and expansion that kicked them off. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but in a limited way, the Last Days of Disco is as good a meditation on the end of its era as The Great Gatsby is about the end of the Jazz Age.Some people won't like this film because they'll have a hard time relating to the yuppies who are the major characters, but the character development (or lack thereof) is one of the movie's major strengths. Director Stillman is in perfect control of the dynamics of their interactions. He knows all these people very well from real life.Although it's a wee bit stilted at times, another strength of the movie is its dialog, which is very original and first class. The Last Days of Disco is a superb tableau of the morality of its times and deals with a number of themes that are central to the human condition.All in all, I think this movie deserved a better fate than it has received so far. I'm afraid that it was probably as big a failure as Barcelona was a success, and I find it sad that Stillman, whom I regard as a very original voice in American movies, has perhaps been unable to find backers for new projects since that time, although I understand that he may soon (2007) finally have another release in the offing. If you like The Last Days of Disco, you will almost certainly enjoy his two earlier films, Metropolitan and Barcelona.