Elephant

Pros: A couple nice renditions of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"
Cons: Screenplay, Acting, Stylistic Excess, Dishonest Intentions

Okay, here’s the thing. When I see a movie about what I consider to be a serious topic, I want to see the filmmakers put up an effort. An effort to do something with the topic. Anything at all. To educate, enlighten, persuade, delve deep, ...

Pros: Directing, Camera Angles, Acting, Story
Cons: somewhat violent ending

The setting is Portland, Oregon.  Not a particularly special city to deal with this story, and not a place where a story like this would be thought to unfold.  Just a normal neighborhood, in a normal city, with a high school full of normal kids.  But ...

Pros: The choreography was interesting
Cons: Pointless, goes nowhere

Elephant is such a bad movie with such a stupid agenda that it actually made me angry while watching it. I’ve sat through Freddy Got Fingered and the recent awful Transamerica without getting mad, but this movie really pissed ...

Pros: Well thought out. Thought provoking.
Cons: The sum of its component parts are greater than the whole.

Although I‘m a long way from being any kind of expert on film, I have always held a sneaking regard for the talents of director Gus Van Sant (My Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting). I appreciate his unusual subject matter, his unhurried approach ...

Pros: important. beautifully shot and realized.
Cons: none.

Gus van Sant knows how to make unique and wonderful films and it appears that, at long last, he's gotten back to doing so. His most recent film, Elephant, won the prestigious Palm d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival and opened in the US a ...

Pros: Van Sant doesn't try to explain why Columbine happened...
Cons: Everything else...

The tragic killings at Columbine High School brought the issues of schoolyard anger, teenage angst, and violent media to the forefront of discussion. All these things were already common ideas in many arenas, but for most people (me not included—I’d ...

Pros: intellectual look at High School society
Cons: lack of retribution from any authority figure

Presented in a loopy style recalling cinema verite, Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" illuminates a single day in the lives and events of students, teachers, and administrators in a high school. The story is about two high school students Eric (Eric Deulen) ...

Pros: Mesmerizing production. Important picture, on a crucial theme: America's enveloping psychopathic lust for violence.
Cons: Cold film will put some off by its theme, others by its lack of logic.

What epitomizes America: God's Blessing? [but whose God? which blessing?] Blue skies, a gentle sound of running water, the bounty of the Harvest, an Autumn morning? [Thanksgiving?] The Rule of Law and Order? The American Dream? Free Public Education? "A ...

Pros: Performances
Cons: Everything else.

I wasn’t quite sure what to think about Elephant, a movie that came to the silver screen and eventually HBO with much fan fare, when I first heard about it. Elephant (2003) is based loosely on the events surrounding the Columbine High ...

Pros: Directing/Script, Editing, Cinematography, Look, Atmosphere, Music, & Cast.
Cons: None.

In the Spring of 1999, I was just another high school senior in the final months of my high school education in Campbell High School in Smyrna, GA. Never belonging to any kind of clique, in those final months. Myself and whatever group of friends I ...

Pros: A very beautiful and powerful movie with awesome direction
Cons: some acting by some certain actors

I know that we were supposed to bring something funny and witty to amuse each other broadly, but I thought better. I want to write about a movie extraordinary. For those, who want the non-reviewed experience (like I had), please trust my word and watch ...

Pros: Wonderfully directed, beautifully performed.
Cons: None.

Working from his own screenplay, Van Sant has created a film that is frightening to watch. It takes the taboo subject of violent High School students and treats it with respect. The movie has no linear plot; we follow key students around the school, ...

Pros: Cinematography, improvision, reality, terror.
Cons: Gets a little slow at times; some lame suggestions.

Elephant is a film like no other because it succeeds in doing what so many other films have failed to do: bring to life real conversation. Instead of getting the generalized, cliche'd talk that we find in films like "2 Fast 2 Furious", we get the ...

Pros: This respectful representation of High School life defies pat answers or generalizations.
Cons: The meditative pacing may aggravate those with short attention spans.

The Columbine High School shooting was the catalyst for Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that damned the gun industry and won the 2002 Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is ...

Pros: Interesting idea
Cons: The only con is this movie sucks.

If anyone were to make a movie about the Columbine tragedy, this pompous crap isn't it. To think about the critics who heaped praise upon praise about this movie, shows a culture that can sometimes be so blind to art, that they don't realize it's just ...