4h44 Dernier jour sur Terre

4:44 The Last Day on Earth is an existential film by director Abel Ferrara that made me wish he went back to making those video nasties that earned him notoriety in the first place.

The film focuses on a couple in love on the last day of earth just before the planet is about to be destroyed by cosmic radiation. Cisco (Willem Dafoe) is an actor, his wife Skye (Shanyn Leigh) is an artist. They are rather benign about the world coming to an end and accepted their fate which incidentally so has many other people in the planet hence the lack of worldwide panic.

Cisco and Skye make love, they argue, talk to other loved ones, she still paints and they are generally bewildered

Interspersed throughout the film are news clips of reporters, commentators and celebrities who contemplate what the end of the world will be like such as Al Gore and the Dalai Lama.

The film is tedious, grim and empty.

The ecologically devastated world will end at 4:44 h of the next day. In New York, the fifty and something year-old Cisco (Willem Dafoe) and his younger wife Skye (Shanyn Leigh) spend their last day together in their apartment, waiting for the coming doomsday.

"4:44 Last Day on Earth" is a boring and dramatic movie by Abel Ferrara disclosing the last day on Earth of a couple of lovers in New York. The movie seems to be sponsored by the Skype with many calls from their apartment using this software. The uninteresting plot is basically a filmed storyline with the usual use of religious images by Ferrara and nothing else. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "4:44 - O Fim do Mundo" ("4:44 - Last Day on Earth")

This movie is a joke!! The best quote from this movie is, "Al Gore was always right and we just didn't listen." I want the time I spent watching this back the movie owes me that part of my life back. Please oh please if you have half a mind stay away from this flick. Meditation, sex(ugly sex at that), drugs, and blues music. In this movie the sky is literally falling since the ozone layer is depleting faster than anyone expected. This movie is to scare you into being environmentally straight. I went out and tossed some litter while driving my gas guzzler for no reason except pure spite at this movie. If everyone knew the world was ending there would be mass hysteria which includes mass murders, robberies, shootings, break-ins, rapes, no one would be working (especially delivering food or working a 7-11 also most cops would not stay away from their loved ones either). WAKE-UP!!!!!!!!!!

4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011)

** (out of 4)

Abel Ferrara's look at the final day on Earth centers on an actor (Willem Dafoe) and his painter girlfriend (Shanyn Leigh) as both of them have different emotions on the big day. 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH isn't a complete success but it's not the disaster that some people made it out to be. It's pretty strange that with so many stories that could be told about the final day, director Ferrara took a rather bland couple to make a film about. These people basically have sex, talk, paint, fight and try to come to terms with dying. None of this stuff is all that extraordinary and it doesn't even seem like Ferrara wanted to do anything too outrageous. For the most part the film is pretty simple from start to finish and it's quite laid back as well. Those expecting something crazy from the controversial director aren't going to find it here, although we are treated to one rather graphic sex scene. The performances for the most part are extremely good with Dafoe stealing the film but this here isn't anything new. The actor is so calm, cool and collective in the part that the character becomes quite memorable even though he isn't given much to do in the story. Leigh is also good in her part as is Natasha Lyonne and Paul Hipp in their small roles. 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH is far from bad but at the same time the entire picture just has a bland feel to it. Fans of the director or Dafoe might want to check it out but others should probably stay away.

This is a film where the title sounds good, but the writing and execution suck. Supposedly something (humanity's destruction of the environment) is leading to rapid ozone depletion and it will disappear at 4:44. At this point the writer, having no idea what the ozone layer is and how it works, says the world will end (though how is never stated). Having totally misrepresented the science (since even with no Ozone layer, life would initially continue and man could adjust, though in 5-10 years the global effects would be bad), the rest of the script goes into a tailspin as well. For a planet where it's predicted everyone will die at some specific time within one-day ... life seems to be getting on pretty well (at least what we can see of it since the scenes all take place in the females apartment so, other than TV shots or the few rooftops shots near the end). I mean come on now, would someone be sitting on a TV show calmly discussing the end minutes before it comes? This movie seems to be more of something shoved together so the directors wife (the female star) could say she was in a movie. Not worth watching.