The Last Days of Disco (1998): Sorely underrated and commercially ignored, this is a bit of a letdown after Whit Stillman's first two films - but it's still better than 90% of the moronic drivel Hollywood pumps out. Not that I don't love mindless moronic drivel - laughed all the way through Baseketball - but, as I said, I appreciate the rare director who doesn't treat me like I have the IQ of an inbred. Set in the early '80s among a similar set of characters (and some of the cast) that populated Metropolitan, this traces the romantic relationships of young preppies in the urban not-so-jungle. The truly annoying thing is the incongrous timeline: though set in the early '80s, the soundtrack comes from the late '70s, the term "yuppie" is bandied about several years before it became a commonplace insult, and the footage of the infamous "Disco Sucks" rally occurred in 1979. There's really no plot, and if you have a short attention span or don't care about smart and witty dialogue, then don't watch this, since the movie consists of nothing but witty dialogue. Stillman has a knack for making you actually want to get involved with extremely shallow, selfishly materialistic brats of the pampered upper class; he subverts convention by siding with the aristocracy rather than the proles. The male characters aren't drawn very well and can be hard to tell apart, but the female are much more interesting. Apart from a bit of drug abuse, there's not much Boogie Nights decadence, and the film is far, far better than the dreary 54. In the best scene, the group of friends deconstruct The Lady and the Tramp as if they're discussing Kafka - some may call this unrealistic, but I beg to differ - that's the way real people really talk, at least if you've been to college (as most people do these days). I myself have had ridiculous conversations of that nature many a time, and this scene is even better than the famous deconstruction of Madonna lyrics in Reservoir Dogs.
Grade: A-
The Last Supper (1995) : Essentially an update of the premise of Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace, a group of liberal grad students invite a visitor over every weekend for dinner to discuss politics. Unfortunately, one night one of their guests turns out to be a psychotic right-wing trucker who thinks that Adolf Hitler had the right idea; the trucker (Bill Paxton) attacks one of the grad students and threatens to rape his girlfriend, and during the melee Paxton is stabbed in the back in arguable self-defense. The bewildered students conclude that instead of involving the cops, they should bury the trucker and pretend the event never happened -- until some of them get the inspiration to continue killing people they don't agree with (i.e. conservatives) as a means to rid the world of bad elements. An intriguing plot idea, but it's played out far too quickly -- one sees easily how this film will: the grad students invite a stereotypical conservative bigot (the conservatives are all grotesque caricatures, idiotic extremists of the type one...sigh...unfortunately does meet too often in real life) to supper, and lamely try to win him/her over to their side (if these are supposed to be grad students, they're terribly inarticulate and ineffectual ones -- these people are merely cookie-cutter liberals who can't do more than wring their hands when someone disagrees with their views, instead of countering with intelligent arguments!). They progress from an bishop who believes that AIDS is God's cure for fags to a man who believes that rape is bullshit to a black nationalist (hell, I'd consider killing assholes like those three!), to such relative innocents as a school-marmish book burner and a teenage girl who opposes sex education. Ron Perlman plays a Rush Limbaugh clone they nail for dinner, only to have the tables...but I don't want to give too much away, though the end is pretty predictable (and very weak compared to the rest of the plot -- I was really disappointed). The overall message isn't pro liberal or conservative, but pro-tolerance: just because you disagree with someone's views, doesn't mean you have the right to kill them. Unfortunately, the film never digs very deeply into its concept, though it remains fairly entertaining (if far too predictable). The politics are meaningless since they're facilely divided between "good" (PC liberalism) and "bad" (PI conservatism), as if there's not any other categories -- most people aren't lockstep liberals or conservatives, but more complex in their views than that. Typical shallow Hollywood BS, in other words, but really, I don't take Hollywood stars' and screenwriters' politics any more seriously than I do heavy metal lyrics -- all is overlooked as long as they deliver a good time. Which this flick does in its way, even though I can see the ending coming a mile away.
Grade: B-