O Último Jantar

A group of graduate students invite people (one at a time) for dinner and discussion. Their first guest in this movie is Zachary, a truck driver and Desert Storm vet who believes Hitler had the right idea, that Jews stole then and steal now, that the Holocaust was an exaggeration, that liberals accomplish nothing and they wouldn't be able to fight if they had to. He gets the others so riled that ... well, I won't say. But the students begin discussing the ethics of going back in time, if it were possible, to stop Hitler. Would they kill him or merely try to convince him he was wrong? Meanwhile, Zachary may be a suspect in a kidnapping.

Guest no. 2 is the kindly Rev. Hutchens, who believes the relatives of AIDS victims deserve no comfort. After all, those who got AIDS committed a mortal sin for which there should be no forgiveness. The dinners continue, with guests expressing more and more outlandish opinions. Some are not jerks, such as the sweet teenage girl who believes sex education should not be taught because family values are more important. And then there is wacko TV commentator Norman Arbuthnot, who may go into politics but probably shouldn't because he appears to be as demented as Hitler. Meanwhile, the students begin arguing more and more, while the garden never looked better. It's a special fertilizer they're using.

If this is a comedy, it's a very dark one. But I couldn't help laughing as ... continued improvements to the garden were made. And some of the weird opinions expressed were really funny. I didn't like the students--or their way of dealing with those who disagreed--but I did like Charles Durning a lot as the good Reverend, even if I didn't care for his opinions. And Bill Paxton did quite a good job as Zachary.

The best thing about the movie is that it gets a person thinking about other people's views and how bad it is to have unpopular opinions. We have freedom of speech in this country, and the right to our opinions, and this is what it means.

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.

I must say, I'm not what you would call a liberal. I'm a Democrat, but I don't consider myself one of those "limousine liberal" -- re: rich, white middle-class people who have never endured poverty in their live, and yet somehow can "feel" for those currentlys uffering. Yeah, right!

All that side, this is a wickedly funny movie and completely unpredictable. I love the intense scenes with the cop and when the liberals start to contemplate rather they should kill or not kill their dinner "guests." it's just great stuff!

Imagine, all these "tolerant" liberals sitting around judging people on what they say and starting to actually LIKE killing. Pretty soon they're killing because of the power of killing, not because they want to "rid the world of evil" -- which, ironically, they've become, since they're knocking off everyone and their mom, including the cop, who is just doing her job.

As the saying goes, "I can't tolerate intolerable people!"

And stay for the ending. It's a KILLER! Ron Perlman is GREAT.

I just read through 48 comments and I think nobody mentioned "Arsenic and Old Lace," which is an obvious source for the idea of quizzing guests and, as a good deed, giving wine with arsenic to those who'd be better off dead.

Here the story is set against a familiar political divide, and as the murders (and cameos) follow one another, the criteria for getting killed become distressingly looser until the audience becomes impatient for the inevitable retribution.

All this exposition of criteria takes considerable time, and evidently character development needed to be sacrificed. I'm sure that in creating a large group of murderers who all share a house, the creators had something in mind (other than "Friends") and we get the impression of an attempt at characterization but it doesn't jell. The movie would have been better off with just one couple in on the plot; that's all Shakespeare needed for Macbeth.

"The Last Supper" has a lot going for it. It makes fun of both ultra-right-wingers and of self-righteous left-wingers. Like "The Sixth Sense", it uses the color red to carefully dye the house of the roommates until it appears to be dripping in blood. It shows the corruption of the mind which will inevitably occur as a result of murder, and it displays the old saw about how the road to Hell is paved in good intentions.

Problem? The acting is pretty dry. None of the roommates are remotely likable, and their inevitable comeuppance loses some of its punch as a result. All of the characters, both the executioners and their prey, are excessively one-sided and flat, and no one is making the slightest effort to give any of their characters depth. The result makes the film a bit hard to sit through.