The Last Supper (1996)

Let's be realistic.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

A bunch of liberal grad students (played by then unknown Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner and Coutney B. Vance) accidentally kill, at dinner in their house, a seriously deranged conservative (Bill Paxton) and bury the body. They figure they did the world a favor and invite ultra conservatives to their house, poison them and bury the bodies in the back yard. Among the victims (in cameos) are Charles Durning, Mark Harmon and Jason Alexander. Nora Dunn plays a policewoman investigating all the disappearances.DARK dark black comedy but it's well-done. The script is sharp and witty and insults BOTH conservatives and liberals. With the sole exception of Vance (who's horrible) the acting is good and we see hunky Penner with his shirt off and walking around in his underwear. Well-directed too with a good eye to compositions and color. Great music score too. If you examine the plot closely there are loopholes and lapses in logic (like they bury about 10 people in their backyard and the neighbors never notice?) but still this is funny and makes you think. Ignored at the time of its release this made a little splash on VHS and deserves to be rediscovered.

This is a pretty amusing send up of self righteousness and political extremism on the small scale. Five liberal room mates -- Diaz, Eldard, Gish, Penner, and Vance -- at a university in Iowa share a full-course meal in their home with a young man who reveals himself to be an unashamed macho war monger. A fight breaks out and the guest easily overpowers the wimpy hosts but is stabbed in the back by one of them. The victim burps, falls to the floor and dies.For the most part, the instrument of the deliberate murders that follow is poisoned wine. Let me recount the names of some of the right-wing victims: Bill Paxton is the dedicated warrior; Charles Durning as a minister who thinks queers deserve to die of AIDS; Mark Harmon as the ne plus ultra of male chauvinism; Jason Alexander as a man devoted to despoiling the earth; Pamela Gien as a librarian who thinks that "Catcher in the Rye" is pornographic. She doesn't drink so she has to be stabbed in the back.But this is the kind of comedy that doesn't need an excess of gore to be funny, so there is no gore at all. The ludic element lies elsewhere -- partly in occasionally clever but noetic unknowables. Example: If you were alone with Hitler in 1929, knowing what you now know, would you let him live? Partly the humor lies in ancillary themes. The Gang of Five decide to bury their first victim in the back yard, resulting in a suspicious-looking mound of earth. They put a tomato plant on top to disguise its contours. Eventually they have half a dozen huge tomato plants growing on the graves and there is a super-abundance of red ripe home-grown tomatoes. At first they can the tomatoes but the cabinets are finally filled. Then they slice them and hang them up to be sun dried. The tomatoes keep coming and getting bigger. They begin skeet shooting the tomatoes. They swing at them with baseball bats. Their last supper is spaghetti with marinara sauce. Another scene has Carmen Diaz planting pansies around the borders of the graves but it simply make the place look more like a cemetery than ever. (She gets PO'd when Vance rips them out.) And one of the roomies is a painter. He recreates, in a monstrous manner, Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel. On the dining room ceiling. (It should have been Da Vinci's "The Last Supper.")They run into trouble when they manage to persuade a rabble-rousing, right-wing TV maniac, Ron Perlman, to have a good meal at their home. During the dinner, before he is served the "dessert" wine, he cheerfully admits that he only rants on television because of the ratings, that in actuality he is full of crap. He thinks both extremes are dangerous and that centrists control government and always will. And if he met Hitler alone in 1929? No, he wouldn't kill Hitler. (The hosts reach for the "dessert" wine.) Instead, he would do his best to talk Hitler out of his designs. The connivers hesitate, then scurry outside for a discussion.Left alone in the dining room, the phony right-wing nut job lights a cigar and wanders around. He's about to pour a glass of the "dessert" wine but it smells funny to him. Then he picks up a local paper and reads an item about all the missing locals. The penny drops and he stares back at the bottle of poisoned wine. Lieutenant Columbo should have such intuition.It's all kind of amusing, so why isn't it funnier than it is? Great material, nice photography and lighting, and no clunk performances, but I kept thinking what Ealing Studios might have done with this plot in the mid-1950s. There would have been less extravagance in the performances for one thing. The room mates keep arguing and shouting at one another, leading to a scene in which one is about to shoot another with a magnum. There would have been fewer victims, probably, and more comic elements attached to each murder. Some of the victims are hardly seen, getting barely enough screen time to say a few words before their demise. There is discontinuity in some of the characters too, and it stands out. Carmen Diaz is flippant about the first murder but anguished for no reason by the last. Except for Courtney Vance, Jr., who remains consistent, their positions through time are erratic. And sometimes the mood shifts violently without justification.But, these qualifications notwithstanding, I kind of enjoyed it. I still wish it had been made in the mid-50s by Ealing, but it's kind of fun, and welcome relief from most of the garbage showing up on the screen lately.

Very, very dark comedy with an intriguing premise and great acting. Lots of cameos from various celebrities as the dinner guests, ranging from Bill Paxton to Ron Perlman (Hellboy) to Jason Alexander. Of the five main characters, Courtney B. Vance's character Luke is by far the most interesting, as he's just as extreme and 'evil' as the people they're poisoning. Thought the premise is interesting, the film is far too short, and doesn't go much beyond 'invite a conservative guest over, kill them, rinse, repeat'. I did like the ending a lot though. It's an entertaining and interesting watch, with some hilarious bits (the bit with the lady who doesn't drink wine had me in stitches) and a definite message, though it's neither overtly liberal or conservative.

An unusual dark comedy about the unconscious forces which propel all ideology, whether it be of the conservative right-wing, or liberal left-wing variety. In its premise, it reminded me a little of the play "Le Malentendu" (The Misuderstanding) by Camus. Sure, some of the acting was a bit wooden and yes, the characters did lack depth, but there is little space for depth of character development in a movie of this genre anyway. The questions it asks are philosophical, about the nature of the human mind in general: hence the way Marc and his girlfriend at first were turned on, then gradually became estranged as their gratuitous villainy became more conscious was a comment on the dark side of sexuality; the same comment was made about human aggression when the character who shot clay pigeons for a hobby suddenly decides to shoot a real live bird - in fact, that seems to be a decisive moment in the film, the expression on the character's face when he shoots the bird says it all. It may be unpleasant to think about these aspects of our nature, but I wish more intelligent films like this came out of Hollywood.