4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012)

This film was not intended to be a "Fire and Brimstone disaster thriller" but rather a glimpse of how two people decide to spend their last hours on earth. Unlike the "Film Experts" or so they would have you believe, this film does explain (not in great detail) why the end is coming and how a few people get ready for it. The film in my opinion was designed to make you think about what could happen and not send you off into a "make believe" world of outlandish stunts and explosions, etc. There are more than enough of those films if that is what you are into. The setting for this film is fantastic and the acting was great. After watching this movie it made me think long and hard about what it would be like if the end were a few short hours away, so the way I see it the film did what is was meant to do.

The world is coming to an end at 4:44 am EST as solar radiation will destroy the ozone layer (or something non-sensible like that). Skye (Shanyn Leigh) and Cisco (Willem Dafoe) spend the last day and night in their NYC loft.I'm not what is the most annoying about this movie. The undecipherable science that is dropped piece-meal in this movie. The mumbling craziness coming out of Dafoe. The religious spiritual ramblings that goes on here. Or the wonky acting being performed by Shanyn Leigh. This is basically a high concept low production film school project. It's not real enough to be compelling. It's not surreal enough to be interesting. At least we find out that we can still get take-out on the last day on earth.

I read another review here who said don't watch this film with loudmouth know it all. Have an open mind. In other words, if you don't agree that this is a great film, there's something wrong with you!Like this film, the reviewer is a pretentious buffoon.Let me say that I really like Ferrara and think The Bad Lieutenant is a GREAT movie. Up there with the Godfather. And I mean that.Unfortunately, that may be the only good film he's ever made.In 444 we spend nearly 10 minutes watching Dafoe shave. Then he gets his nipples licked for another 3 or so. Before having his pubes rubbed. Compelling stuff -- not. It's just all pretentious.The girl (a painter) asks him in the beginning why he bothers shaving if the world is ending. Well a better question might be, why are you continuing to paint? Shaving takes a few minutes, you're painting for the whole movie. Idiot.And so goes the movie. I wanted to like it. I'm looking for the impact of Bad Lieutenant, but got a sorry slow uninteresting story.Dafoe is surprisingly stiff and shows no acting ability at all. Guess he had to make the best of what he got in the terms of a script. Plus, he's supposed to be a successful actor in the movie, but lives in a hovel and complains about rent increases -- he doesn't even own the shoe box! And why is everyone so calm? Let's be honest, if the end was really coming it would be lootig and pandemonium. As you might expect, the film has a completely unsatisfying ending. Why should the end be any different?

Judgement day is upon us. Having raped Mother Earth for resources we have brought about her death with her essence dilapidated and ravaged, thus bringing about an abrupt end to all life, as we die en masse with a bright light of an ozone layer mega-burp. People attempt to cope with the inevitable, mostly be lingering around a computer with Skype access to say farewells, or just start jamming out some sick melodies online. A successful young painter Skye (Shanyn Leigh) and her elderly famous actor lover Cisco (Willem Dafoe) spend their last days next to each other, mostly absent in mind and body, occasionally getting down and dirty with sex the ultimate completion of love.Resident American bad-boy Abel Ferrara grinned across the red carpet in Venice in 2011 with his apocalyptic end of days summary of human existence. Closer to the self-flagellatory oblivious oblivion of von Trier's "Melancholy" (also with respect to possessing an equally idiotic premise for Earth's demise) than the light-weight, but emotionally engrossing "A Friend for the End of the World", Ferrara's independent drama dwells in overly prolonged moments, which litter the movie, but fail to fill it with substance.Rough around the edges (to say the least) this poke at sci-fi follows the same old path as most art-house directors attempting to venture into the genre: they introduce an absolutely absurd plot and justify this laziness with 'symbolism' and 'higher purpose'. Maybe not as idiotic as the incoming planet Melancholia, but still thinly layered and done with much less poetry than von Trier. Here we have a notion introduced that 'Al Gore was right' and that the depleted ozone layer will cause the world to burst into flames at one precise moment, ie. 4:44 AM (not even the biggest pessimists of global warming would ever conceive something as absurd). Meanwhile, before this sudden blast of fiery fury life goes on as usual, even on judgement day street life seemingly unchanged (apart from certain minor events), while no cosmic events lead up to the inevitable. Cisco portrays culpability of every single human being through a dream sequence, where he cuts down a tree. Basically showing the heavy-handed approach chosen by Ferrara. Now... I can be labelled somewhat of an eco-nut, but the symbolic premise is brutally thin and sloppily added on, with no true feel that the end of days is upon us (a far cry from the limited ambitions of "A Friend for the End of the World").Dropping the eco-pretext and letting it linger in the background the movie is about ending, closing and accepting. But is closure ever possible? Maybe not, but acceptance is inevitable. Here we labour down this path following the whirlwind emotions with snail's pace. Furthermore with death creeping ever closer we find Skye more intrigued with finishing her final painting, while Cisco spends time peeping through binoculars into other people's houses, possibly Ferrara's suggestion that detachment was natural, while only the ultimate end pulls people back into each others arms. Nonetheless this solitude near the end serves to offer two worthwhile scenes in the movie. The first involves a Vietnamese immigrant, who still delivers food on judgement day, simply because he is disconnected from his family abroad and in his lonely desperation decides not to alter his path. The other has Cisco observing other people during the final minutes of existence and almost admiring how they cope with the inevitable. Two scenes alone which made the movie a passable experience, even if the contrived dysfunctional relationship of Cisco and Skye just drags along to a poetically unsatisfying conclusion.