4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012)

Who payed the critics

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is the type of artsy fartsy movie that is so so tragically stupid, it would rightfully even make an environmental activist groan. Who for instance came up with the absurd notion for this movie that once the ozone layer had fully depleted, a huge explosion would occur and shatter all the windows?I'm normally the kind of person who is able to overlook the overall absurdity of the plot of any check-your-brain-at-the-door popcorn flick and just enjoy it, but this movie goes absolutely nowhere. It's a slow, boring movie with characters that are completely uninteresting and don't develop at all. Since an environmental crisis is so integral to the plot, I have to touch on it a bit. First of all, this movie was made 20 years too late to be believable. It was fashionable during the 80's to believe in the depletion of the ozone layer, but when it was discovered that was no longer the case, people often credit climate science even though there are now almost twice as many people on Earth. Furthermore, the sun is what creates the ozone layer. If pollution were the cause of ozone depletion rather than by the natural tilt of the Earth to the sun, holes would appear over the continents of the biggest polluters, rather than over Antarctica. Since it's been established that penguins and the occasional humans suffer no ill effects when there allegedly was an ozone hole, why not move closer to the Earth's southern polar region to survive? Never mind EVERYONE in the background driving their cars, running their businesses and going about their daily lives.This movie is little more than a celebration of junk science and its champions, making this the type of movie that Leonardo DiCraprio would've done for free.

The human race is destined to be eradicated from the planet at 4:44 a.m. due to the depletion of the ozone layer. Aging actor Cisco (a strong and intense performance by Willem Dafoe) and his much younger painter lover Skye (a fine and affecting portrayal by the pretty Shanyn Leigh) spend the last night on Earth together in their Manhattan high-rise apartment. Writer/director Abel Ferrara brings a subdued and reflective sensibility to the compelling story as he shows the characters dealing with the inevitability of life coming to a close by attempting to make amends for past indiscretions, saying goodbye to family and friends (Cisco telling his estranged daughter farewell via Skype rates as one of the single most heartbreaking moments in the picture), working on one last piece of art (Skye feverishly paints her final canvas throughout the course of the narrative), having sex, and getting high on drugs. Keeping the focus low-key and intimate by centering on two people, Ferrara manages to bring an extra gut-wrenching poignancy to the fairly plausible premise. Real-life newscaster Pat Kiernan has an especially moving scene in which he bids adieu to his viewers on live television. Popping up in nice bits are Natasha Lyonne as the saucy Tina, Anita Pallenberg as Skye's bitter mother, and Paul Hipp as Cisco's supportive ex-junkie brother Noah. The potent mood of doom and dread reaches a harrowing apex towards the end, with the uncompromisingly downbeat conclusion packing a real devastating punch. Both Ken Kelsch's sharp cinematography and the bluesy score by Francis Kuipers are up to par. A unique and interesting oddball entry in the apocalyptic science fiction genre.

"Anyone who believes in infinite economic growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist." - Attenborough Mankind works its way toward extinction in Abel Ferrara's "4:44 Last Day on Earth". The film made it onto several Cahiers Du Cinema "best film" lists, but is otherwise widely hated."Earth" opens in a spacious New York apartment, home to Ciso (Willem Dafoe) and Skye (Shanyn Leigh), a couple of bohemian artists. As the world is going to end at 4:44am the following morning, our duo are in a state of anxiety. He mumbles to himself, she paints a gloomy Ouroboros snake on their living room floor, a dark, gaping maw at its serpentine centre.The film's first act watches as our couple squabble, make love and nervously await termination. Then they have more sex. Ferrara films these "romantic" sequences with raw closeups, lingering on flesh and open pores; bodies touch bodies, perhaps for the very last time.Counterpointing this "literal" connection is a colder form of digital connection. Loved ones "meet" on web-cams, talk on computer screens, including a Vietnamese delivery boy, who borrows a laptop to hastily chat with his family. Then it's back to work. Even on the eve of Armageddon, the poor seem busy. Cisco ashamedly gives the kid wads of now-useless cash.Ferrara tries to get political. Like Godard on a bad day, he cuts to TV screens and desktops, most of which show trees falling, fires burning or feature newscasters ruminating about ozone depletion. Al Gore, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela....they all make an appearance, public figureheads who chastise man and herald extinction. "Where are the experts?" Ciso fumes, beside the fake trees stencilled on his rooftop. "How's that 2 and a half percent feel now?! We're all gonna die! We're already dead!" Ferrara's "Body Snatchers" touched upon, vaguely, the linkages between capitalism, militarism and pollution. His later films would develop these themes further. "4:44 Last Day on Earth", however, is content to wallow in futility. The time's up. You reap what you sow. Karma has come for mankind, tenfold. A Buddhist monk offers a new course ("Plant a different image in your mind and you can stop death!") as does Cisco ("Take what you need, think of the others!"), but it's too late now. The tipping point has been reached.Ferrara's climactic annihilation is due to both the "ozone layer being destroyed" and some sort of "solar surge", but the film is uninterested in such details. Ferrara's climactic event is symbolic, not literal. In the real world, there is itself no single extinction day. As economist Bernard Manning says, "every day is another Armageddon". 100 species go extinct daily, biodiversity decreases and the poor die. Capitalism strangles slowly, breaks down, then starts again. Armageddon is continuous, uninterrupted, and well hidden. In one scene, Cisco watches as the Dalai Lama discusses greed and money. "Money is not the ultimate evil," His Holiness says (surprising for a staunch Marxist like himself), but greed. This is a common sentiment, but it can also be argued that contemporary money is "literally evil", as many (the dictionary definition of "evil" is: "ruinous", "harmful" and "causing of future misfortune") radical economists and even scientists (Soddy, Einstein, Edison) show: as all money is issued as debt at interest, it can only exponentially increase debts, it can only increase poverty/inequality, and contemporary money by its very design exists to redistribute energy from the bottom of society to the top regardless of individual morality, individual behaviour or its "type" of usage. Money is not an innocuous thing (or as Friedmanites say, "superneutral"). It is an engine which exerts its own forces. Recent computer simulations (Peter Victor et al), or even mathematical representations (Adrian Dragulescu, Victor Yakovenko) are themselves able to map money. They show that money, like energy, heeds the laws of conservation. Fast forward these simulations, and only two outcomes are reached: our economic system has to either plunge deeper into debt, or its source (usually central banks) ends up accumulating all money. Ceaseless consumption, production, death and expansion forestall these outcomes. Such things have led to even NASA jumping on-board the doom-and-gloom bandwagon. In 2014, Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centere, led by mathematician Safa Motesharrei, predicted "irreversible collapse" due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. Their report was ignored."Earth" ends with snippets from "The Hairy Ape", an expressionist play (which starred Dafoe) about a brutish labourer continually bamboozled by the rich. Ferrara's Cisco is in a way a modern update of "Ape's" lead, living a self-obsessed (he's shaving hours before the world dies?), passive existence. If the film poses the question "What do you do when you know the world is going to end?", Cisco's answer is "wait in isolated privilege". His daughter plays video games as 4 o clock nears."Earth's" last act contains a subplot in which Cisco confronts his past drug addictions. Ferrara was himself an addict, and casts his own real life partner (Leigh) as Cisco's mate, lending the film an autobiographical quality, Ferrara contemplating his own mortality, and perhaps also New York's.Ferrara's New York is itself strangely quiet, recalling her tranquil 2003 blackouts. The city's inhabitants are alone, isolated, reduced to electronic ghosts talking on screen, and seem to accept death with calm and serenity. Last words: "All we have is each other, our time has come. We are all angels now." 7.9/10 – Worth two viewings.

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?