Rating: 
Summary: Robbed by The Academy
Review: It's a joke that this didn't win more Oscars or even get nominated for Best Picture. It's possibly the best film of the decade.Ebert once said: "No great film is depressing - all bad ones are."Right on, chubby.Both lead performances are exceptional. Nic Cage can actually make you laugh while he breaks your heart. The score is fantastic, contrary to what other Jabronis have written on here.THis film will endure. Classes will study it for decades to come.(All this and you get to see Elisabeth Shue's boobies for the first time! - Giddyup!!)
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, compelling and painful
Review: I found this film very hard to watch. Not because it is a bad film but because of the material with which it deals and the strength of the portrayal of that material.Nicolas Cage plays Ben, a man who is on the way down and who knows it. He loses his family and his job and the only thing that he has left is drinking. Finally, destroying everything that remains of his old life, he takes his severance pay and sets off for Las Vegas with the simple intention of drinking himself to death. There he has a chance encounter with prostitute Sera (Elisabeth Shue) and they are drawn together. All that Ben needs is a person who will not reject him because he is a drunk and who will not try to get him off the bottle. Sera needs Ben too. She needs a man who wants her for more than just sex or the money that it makes. Oddly, for a relationship involving a prostitute, sex hardly enters into things. The reason is simple. Alcohol is deadening Ben to the extent that he is not sexually interested in Sera. This is the one thing that strains their relationship. Ben never asks Sera to stop working but he makes sure that she knows that he does not like it. Sera cannot understand how Ben can want to be with her but not want her sexually. Finally, Sera realises something about Ben. When he told her that he intended to drink hiumself to death, he was being more serious than with anything else. She asks him to seek help. This precipitates a string of events that breaks them up but they are reunited for a tragic finale in which both finally get what they wanted. Cage puts in a truely outstanding performance as Ben. Watching him gave me the same feelings that I have had when watching a friend get too drunk, too often. He really is totally convincing. Shue is good but her performance is overshadowed by Cage. The final reason that the film is so compelling is the source material. The film is based on a book by John O'Brien who killed himself as filming began. Director, Mike Figgis finished the film as a tribute and O'Brien's father is reported to have described the story as his son's suicide note.
Rating: 
Summary: Painful at best
Review: Movies are an escape for most of us. We enjoy the exhillaration of relating to the characters and blowing stuff up like Arnold or getting the girl like James Bond. Movie character get to do the things we fantasize about doing. I don't fantasize about dying a slow and wretched death while humiliating myself in the process. Perhaps there's some deeper meaning here I'm missing. Not! This movie is worse than boring. It is hours of painfull, torturous, insipid, doleful agony.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Acting, Bad Theme
Review: The acting of both Cage and Shue is excellent without doubt. They make you believe their role is who really they are. The thing I don't understand about the film is what good does it bring to us. I'm saying that because if you are a normal person with a ordinary mind you will feel very sad and dissapointed at the end of the movie. You will not actually learn anything from the movie but to pretent you've found yourself a reason to excuse those who waste thier lifes as hookers and drunks. I personally recommand this movie to those who have a happy life because you may say to yourself thankgod I am not like that.
Rating:
Summary: True love
Review: I never cry at the movies, but this one got me. This was not a story about alcoholism or the desperation of a young woman. It was a sad and touching movie about two lost people who needed each other, and found the real thing. It moved me not because the movie was depressing, but because the love between Ben and Sera is something very few people will ever experience.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly deep and moving
Review: This movie was incredible in all aspects, cinematography, acting, plot, etc. Nicolas Cage's character exemplifies a unique view on life, and his involvement with Elizabeth Shue's character brings into question much of what we take for granted in life. An excellent movie that I recommend to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Numbing and Depressing
Review: This movie left me completely drained after I watched it. The whole basic and pathetic premise of the film is: he gets fired from his job for being incompetent (that's the least of his problems), drives to Vegas after he is dismissed and proceeds to kill himself with hellacious amounts of alcohol, adding an unusually beautiful and compassionate prostitute into the whirlwind of his existence who will only come to love him and be completely pained by his self-loathing and his crumbling will to survive. The whole time I was watching I thought to myself, "Do I really want to watch a movie about a pitiful excuse for a human being trying to rot away their liver with every bottle of liquor they can consume?" You could see this in any broken down part of town without paying $4 for a rental. Nicolas Cage isn't much of an actor except when he's playing to the extreme, and most of his roles seem to be hopelessly drunk - slow and meaningless portrayals of boring characters. The only bright performances I've seen from him are Castor Troy of "Face/Off" and H.I. McDunna from "Raising Arizona". I can't see how this role was such a turn-around for him and why it ever garnered Oscar attention. It's bleak and devoid of any sort of hope for troubled souls. You keep hoping he'll do it for love, he'll put down the bottle, suffer the terrible withdrawal, sweat and cry and bleed and scream, but force himself to live just for Sera (Elisabeth Shue, who is a couple of pounds lighter of despair in this deadweight movie). Never happens. It all ends with his death rattle and her tears falling on his expiring body. Now if that doesn't say enough about it to keep moviegoers away that don't want to be brought down by what they're watching, then I don't know what else to tell anyone. Steer clear of this flick. It will only frustrate you and deny you of your happiness.
Rating:
Summary: Caged bird softly singing
Review: Cage and Shue are both raw and complex, the soundtrack is lush, the photography is meaningful, the script is almost irrelevant as the actors are giving everything they have. It is about giving up the fight for a meaningful existence and getting one too late. Beautiful, poetic, utterly moving.
Rating:
Summary: I Don't know what to say...
Review: about this movie other than to describe how it made me feel the first time I saw it. I think it would be easier to say that I was depressed. But that would not be true. I think it would be more accurate to say that I felt sad, but not upset or angry. I left the theater feeling complete and satisfied in having seen a film that was so encompassing. How can you not feel the love that Sera (with an e) had for Ben. One reviewer said that Ben never understood Sera's love. I don't really know. I think thats a major point in the film. We don't really understand Ben or what caused his pain; hence, we cannot understand truly how he feels about Sera, and how he perceives her love for him. There are many things that we as individuals will never experience and never truly understand. Striving to understand these things makes life pleasureable, and watching LLV was a great pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: Untitled
Review: Umm, this is an awesome movie. Most of the time, you sit there and watch this dude going down the tubes, and you don't know what to do for yourself. The Whole Year Inn, that kind of thing. The guy's funny, but sad, too, and that makes you so conflicted that you don't know what's up. Tears and laughs all together all over again. And again. The best part of the movie. Too many, really. But there's a part of it that really pulls at a lot of different parts of you. They're in a casino and he's kissing her up against the slot machines. But he goes nuts with her and knocks this woman's bucket of quartes over. When he's on the floor to pick them up, Sera tells him that she loves him but he can't hear her: he's on the floor with the quarters. So, the end comes, and he barely gets it that she loves him, and that is the whole tragedy, right there at the end but also all the way through it. I've got this movie on LaserDisc and video and I watch it all the time. People ask me, "How can you watch such a depressing movie all of the time?" I can't explain it. This is the best movie for lonely people, because it's about some really lonely people. If I had the money, I'd get it on DVD.
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