Elephant

Rating:
Summary: Rather Boring (even for regular life)
Review: I have read the reviews and seen the movie all the way through. It was a very boring way to say something that could be summed up in 30 minutes. Yes, life isn't always exciting, life isn't always amazing, but life isn't always so pointless. Even in high school (I'm 27 now) which I still have nightmares about having to go back to, things were never so bleak and mundane. I guess this perspective isn't shared by all, but I was a dork: Never changed in front of other guys, had geeks for friends, was 5' 5" at most, got picked on, etc.... and I never thought it was pointless. I was into music, still am. I also started taking drugs, thank GOD! Maybe if I hadn't I'd like this movie more. I just thought this sentiment could be made better, that's all, and I don't reccommend this movie for anyone, really. I guess the moral to this review is: let your kid do drugs or they may try to kill people. Just kidding... Really though, let your kids do drugs.

Rating:
Summary: Obviously not what many thought it would be...
Review: A fictional account with obvious real-life aspects to it... beautifully filmed and acted, considering there were no real 'actors' in the film. It was obvious that the intent was to simply present the story in a chronologically backwards style and allow you to draw your own conclusions- and there's nothing wrong with that. However, the reason good films don't depict real life in real-life time is because it's simply boring to do so. It screams of having a great, short premise, but having to film SOMETHING to make it a full-length feature. The point of 'this is everyday life' is not lost on most of the people watching it- but it makes for slow, dull cinema. That's the case here for a good portion of the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Left me utterly empty
Review: I agree with many of the positive things said about this movie: it is beautifully done and very well-directed. The movie doesn't bother to explain one way or another - you will take whatever you desire as an explanation for the senseless violence of the film. For me, this was just simply not enough. For a movie loosely based on the Columbine shooting, I want perspective, a view which will provoke discussion, an actual interpretation of the event itself. But merely a protrayal, and an utterly hollow one at that? The movie just left me feeling empty. Not sad, angry, or frusterated - just empty.

Rating:
Summary: Walking
Review: This movie, for the first 40 minutes or so, does nothing but follow high school students walking through halls, across campus, classrooms and a lunchroom at a SNAIL's PACE! It was so boring that I had to stop, return it to it's case and try to erase the thought of having spending $4.95 to rent this totally boring work.

Rating:
Summary: jason
Review: i bought this movie and after watching it i realised that it was the worst movie i had ever seen. how it ever got a screen release i will never know.do not even consider viewing it or buying it. it is NOT a movie in any sense or form

Rating:
Summary: In order to understand, you must think
Review: Although I agree that this is more of a thinking trip than an actual..movie-movie, even though I went into it with the mindset of "okay, this isn't going to be a thriller, but a psychological thing" I was still rather bored. I know that each individual character is depicted just to get a mindset on the day and what high school is like and the such, but we get nothing from a kid walking down the hall for ten minutes with four words spoken-and that wasn't from the kid.

Even the end was unrealistic. I know they weren't trying to explain, but the kid was seeing all this stuff happen (Benny) and didn't do anything. *Blank stare* Yeah. It DOES have meaning; you just have to constantly think to even remotely udnerstand it.

Rating:
Summary: i didn't see any elephants
Review: I agree this is a comedy at heart, but why couldn't it have been a cartoon? It's boring. If you want realism, rent fast times a ridgemont high or the toxic avenger but not this garbage. It made me hungry for pizza. Is there anything good about teenagers?...I think not.

Rating:
Summary: Elephant
Review: To use the phrase not for everyone in description of "Elephant" may be the understatement of the year. Not everyone will like "Elephant", and those people who don't like it won't be wrong. Me, I thought "Elephant" was interesting.
If you are expecting an expose of shcool violence then you'll be dissapointed. In many ways, the school shooting is an afterthought. Writer/ direcotr Gus Van Sant would rather focus on the going on's of the days of the students. Most of this movie is about the mundane: kids going to class, eating in the cafeteria, talking about unimportant things.
By the time the shooting does occur, you have been so built up to it that you expected something a little, well, more. The main problem I had with this movie was that we're not given enough time to care about any of the charactors, so when a few of the people we've met get shot, you don't actually feel anything.
But may be thats the point. This movie doesn't seem about emotional connection rather than disconnection. All the acting is pretty good, ecspecially considering it was done by non-actors, and the movie is very well shot. The pacing is indeed very slow, but I rarely found it boring or dull.
"Elephant" is not the masterpiece that a lot of people seem to think it is, nor is it the piece of garbage that its detractors claim it is. An interesting if flawed experiment.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best of 2003!
Review: I keep coming across so many indie films of the past year, and I have been pleased with most all of them, but this one was an underappreciated gem that got very little attention. This is hard to believe because you'd expect a film like this-with its disturbing subject matter-to draw a little more attention to itself. I had heard that it gained a bit of attention at Sundance, and that it was going to be one of the most controversial films of the year, but it didn't turn out to be that way. Instead, people just blasted Gus Van Sant for even attempting to make the film, ridiculing him and brushing the film off as if it meant nothing-a flawed cinematic acheivement.

Alot of these people that persecuted him really, as it turns out, don't know what they are talking about. They dismissed it as nothing but a series of endless tracking shots, following one student after another until the horrifying climax, adding up to nothing, and offering no answers, no easy way out for the audience. What they don't know is that that is the whole point of the film. It follows each individual or group of students around for minutes at a time so we can get an idea of who they are, what they're like-their humanity. These are just ordinary kids at and ordinary school in Anywhere, USA. They had no idea that two conflicted youths were going to walk in the school any minute and start blasting away. It's all an effort to get the feel of an ordinary day in high school. Believe it or not, each day doesn't just fly by. High school, depending on your experience, can be a long, boring, drawn out experience. Gus Van Sant wants the audience to "get it", but sadly not many people who have seen this film did. Thats very unfortunate, because the series of events that follow the observations of each student are so horrifying and sad that you don't even know what to think once the film is over. You feel like you got to know each of these kids for a while, even though all we did was follow each of them from a distance for a few minutes. I can't really explain how I feel after watching it. All I know is that I won't be able to get it off of my mind for a few days.

See it, but brace yourself - have an open mind.

HIGHLY recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Creepy Elegance
Review: I rented this movie knowing nothing about it. I saw an ad in a magazine and it looked interesting. I'm not a fan of big budget special effect extravaganzas. Anyway, I put it in my DVD and was instantly shot back to Lost in Translation. It wasn't heavy on dialogue, and the filmmakers paid close attention to shots. I also enjoyed not really knowing too much about each character. It left us thinking. Once I realized it was about a school shooting I had to shut it off. I graduated last year from high school and the thought of a school shooting scared me to death. I knew how to get out of every classroom. It didn't help that we had practice lock downs incase of a school shooting. I left it for a day and returned to it and forced myself to watch it. I'm glad I did. It was amazing, beautiful and tragic. Yes, I can see how some people would think this as a boring movie, just as people think Lost in Translation is. I'm sorry if using your brain is a chore.