Ferrara on the final day

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• James Keepnews says:

  March 22, 2012 at 11:50 am

  Nothing sells like the Apocalypse, which must explain why this Ferrara 21^st c. nar­rat­ive fea­ture, and not e.g. GO-GO TALES or MARY, gets some­thing like a release to theat­ers. To me, it’s amus­ing that this is a “LAST DAY” that seems to resemble, right down to the exact time o’ the telos, Don McKellar’s under­ap­pre­ci­ated, eponym­ously dark­er quirk­fest LAST NIGHT, a film whose rewards include one of the my favor­ite clos­ing shots in all of cinema. Personally, I find AF the sur­viv­or a far more inter­est­ing film­maker than AF the lib­ertine, as much as he went there indelibly in his infam­ous oeuvre.
  And along the lines of walk­ing that walk…living in the lower Hudson Valley as I do, I had occa­sion to meet in a loc­al estab­lish­ment one of AF’s crew mem­bers who dates back to the Peekskill-born Ferrara’s earli­est days. I remarked en passant about Vincent Gallo’s miser­ably onan­ist­ic, self-penned pro­file for Grand Royal in the 90’s, where he sug­ges­ted it took remark­able will­power for AF to pull him­self away from his crack tail and his “filthy trail­er” in order to dir­ect VG and oth­er less­er per­son­al­it­ies in THE FUNERAL. This crew mem­ber smiled with great sat­is­fac­tion and replied some­what bril­liantly: “Abel did­n’t have a trail­er on THE FUNERAL”. Aha. So there.

• a_loco says:

  March 22, 2012 at 12:12 pm

  LAST NIGHT POWER.
  I would elab­or­ate on this fur­ther, but I already shot my wad on Wells’ site when he pos­ted a trail­er for that Steve Carell apo­ca­lypse movie.

• Bettencourt says:

  March 22, 2012 at 1:11 pm

  Glad to see some appre­ci­ation for the little-seen LAST NIGHT. David Cronenberg’s final scene was espe­cially chilling and memorable.

• NRH says:

  March 22, 2012 at 3:43 pm

  Anyone for MIRACLE MILE?

• bill says:

  March 22, 2012 at 4:28 pm

  I love LAST NIGHT. The last shot makes the film.

• James Keepnews says:

  March 22, 2012 at 4:58 pm

  Me for MIRACLE MILE, fea­tur­ing two of my favor­ite neg­lected (sic) act­resses, Mare Winningham (à la all-too-rare Miou-Miou mode) and Denise Crosby – some­thing tells me not to sit on a hot stove wait­ing for Hollywood to come up with a com­par­able gag like the lat­ter read­ing the Cliff Notes for GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. Also, the great John Agar rep­res­ent­ing for MM’s vul­gar, fast-beating B‑movie heart.

• Graig says:

  March 22, 2012 at 5:32 pm

  What was the last good movie Ferrara did? THE FUNERAL? I dunno. I haven’t seen MARY, GO GO TALES, or the Chelsea Hotel Doc. I ‘d like to.

• Petey says:

  March 23, 2012 at 7:55 am

  I think I’ll just wait for the Werner Herzog remake.

• Bruce Reid says:

  March 23, 2012 at 9:13 am

  Petey: Herzog’s already been there, with La Soufière.
  Graig: I’ve been dying to see recent Ferrara as well, and have heard only praise for Go Go Tales (partly a func­tion of whom I don’t both­er to read, no ques­tion). But I thought ‘R Xmas was pretty fine, even if it ramped up the mor­al­iz­ing while redu­cing the nar­rat­ive to a series of frayed, delib­er­ately anti­cli­mactic ges­tures. Check it out if you haven’t.

• Carsten Hyatt says:

  March 23, 2012 at 11:37 am

  Ferrara’s long time writ­ing part­ner Nicholas St. John worked with him on a lot (maybe all, except for ‘Bad Lieutenant’ where St. John is not cred­ited) of Ferrara’s best films from ‘Driller Killer’ through ‘The Funeral.’ St. John and Ferrara haven’t worked togeth­er since ‘The Funeral,’ which has surely had an impact on the qual­ity of Ferrara’s out­put. I don’t know why they stopped work­ing together.

• Phil Freeman says:

  March 23, 2012 at 1:18 pm

  I’ll rep for ‘R Xmas, The Blackout and New Rose Hotel. None of ’em touch Bad Lieutenant or King of New York (or even The Addiction, anoth­er one I think is worth see­ing, just for the way Christopher Walken says the line “Have you read William Burroughs?”), but each has indi­vidu­al scenes that make the whole thing worth­while. Hell, The Blackout makes me wish Ferrara had been hired to dir­ect The Hangover.

• Petey says:

  March 24, 2012 at 4:59 pm

  “St. John and Ferrara haven’t worked togeth­er since ‘The Funeral,’ which has surely had an impact on the qual­ity of Ferrara’s output.”
  This is also my read­ing of the situation.