Last Days (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

As you can see, the average score is a hair less than two stars (1.9) out of four, but the range includes every possible score from zero out of ten to a perfect ten.

The American critics were kinder on balance, but equally polarized. Rotten Tomatoes estimates that Last Days received 60% positive reviews, and Metacritic estimates that the average score is 67/100. Those are pretty solid averages, but individual articles cited by Metacritic range from four perfect 100s (including Roger Ebert and the New York Times) all the way down to a perfect zero.

What makes the film so controversial?

Although it features professional cinematography and was directed by Gus van Sant, Last Days plays out like an underground film. Even though the story is not 100% factual, the lead character has strong parallels to Kurt Cobain, and details of the character's suicide are closely related to the events in the Cobain case. What do we actually see on screen? A junkie rock-star wanders through the woods and mumbles incoherently, arrives at a stream, pukes, swims, builds a campfire, and sings "Home on the Range." Then he comes into his disgustingly filthy house and is so wasted that he doesn't even care to continue mumbling incoherently. Most of the time he just listens without comment to false friends and visitors. He eats some dry breakfast cereal, and puts the box in the refrigerator. Along the way to death, he removes an outer layer of clothing to reveal a black dress beneath, then nods off. When the grunge-rocker finally gets around to dying, the director shows a spirit coming out of his body and rising to heaven by climbing up the side of a house. (I didn't make that up.)

If you have ever been around junkies you will undoubtedly agree that this film provides a remarkably accurate evocation of how they behave. You can view that as half-full or half-empty, in that you can praise it for the truth it represents, or condemn it because watching junkies flop about aimlessly is about the least interesting human activity which can be imagined, possibly excluding dinner with your mother-in-law and Andy Rooney. The basic trick of perspective, half-full vs half-empty, explains the wide range of critical responses.

Ultimately, the film runs into the same controversy that always haunts any portrayal of boredom and isolation. If the director portrays the atmosphere of boredom correctly, it will draw audiences into the character's head. If, on the other hand, the film is too interesting and entertaining, the director will have failed to capture the proper mood. Well, this film is not just boring, but intensely boring. That is the reason why some critics assigned this film a zero. But it is meant to be boring - the audience enters the mind of a successful man who committed suicide, thus allowing viewers (in theory) to understand the boredom, and thus the suicide, at the very deepest, most visceral level. That's why other critics assigned it a 100. 

So it will probably make you understand a level of boredom so profound that would cause a famous person to commit suicide. Which means you might want to avoid it if you're depressed.

Or famous.