Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Mike D'Angelo ½ 34

  0/100

  My hatred for this film randomly came up in the comments of a documentary about Pope Francis, and rather than address it there I'll just add the review I wrote (for Time Out New York) here. Though I apparently didn't get much space for it, so it doesn't really capture my loathing very well. A bit more helpful is something I posted from Cannes to a cinephile chat group (before anyone who wasn't at the fest had seen the film, obviously), which I'll also append below.

  IMPORTANT: I engaged in numerous arguments about this film in 2003 and have heard the case for the defense from the best and brightest. No desire to relitigate it in the comments here.…

• 

  Review by russman ★★★

  Synchronized puking should be an Olympic sport

• 

  Review by Matthew L. Brady ★★★★★ 5

  Don't let the title fool you. The movie doesn't have elephant in it, but it has a deep meaning to it that will make your feel like mash after thinking about it to long.

  The story is about high school violence that unfolds on an ordinary school day, inside an American high school, filled with schoolwork, football, gossip and socializing. For each of the students we meet, high school is a different experience: stimulating, friendly, traumatic, lonely, hard.

  'Elephant' is loosely based on the school shooting in 1999 known as "Columbine High School Massacre", with the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. When I say loosely I really do mean loosely, because this isn't base on a true story bullsh't…

• 

  Review by Ava ☭ ★ 17

  this is self indulgent in the worst way possible. it's also pretentious and unfocused. also if you're gonna make a movie that has absolutely anything to do with school shootings please please please get into the shooters minds don't show then playing violent videogames and never address any motives. what a shitty movie

• 

  Review by The Reel House ★★★★ 8

  There was no elephant in this. 

  I want my money back.

• 

  Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★ 1

  there's just something slightly off about this film ..... the 3 stars are for the camera work only

• 

  Review by Ethan ☔️ ★ 1

  Is this film a circle because I couldn’t find the point.

• 

  Review by Jake Cole ★½ 5

  A film that uses its recursive movement as cheap suspense, constantly putting off its carnage at the moment of truth so that the first shot is a release as much as anything. It does not present any one explanation for the massacre, but its open-handed "you choose" inconclusiveness still only presents the usual suspects—bullying, video games, fascism, even sexual confusion and self-discovery—as motives. It is not Van Sant's fault for springboarding off of a media portrait accepted as thoroughly researched despite its reductive fabrication, but when he merely rearranges those elements into something less polemic, has he done any more to communicate what went wrong?

• 

  Review by Bruce Tetsuya ½ 34

  First, let me clarify. I did not waste my time rewatching this selfish, pretentious, sad excuse for a movie to log this tonight. Just going off the experience I had a few years ago, plus some added context to inform this write up.

  "Oh then why waste time writing a bad review for it then??" For one, I just have a lot of pent up emotion towards it and I'd like to get some of that off my chest. And two, in my story yesterday on Instagram (@thedanceofcinema), I mentioned my hate for this film. Which resulted in MANY people asking me why I hated it so much. I am flattered that nearly 30,000 people value my opinion enough to…

• 

  Review by Daniel Carolan ★★★★½

  100 MINUTES & UNDER 

  Masterfully made. The camera floats around the space of the school, following several students through the course of one day. The lengthy steady cam shots created a roadmap in my head of the school's layout... and by the time the two teenage boys act out their killing spree, I knew the school well. However, Gus Van Sant wants us to be detached, and he achieves this by placing us in a position where we can visualise everything but cannot intervene. The distance between the viewer and the action makes us feel completely helpless.

  What causes a teenager to shoot a school is an answer that Gus Van Sant knowingly does not have; nor does anyone else. Could it be the weather?

• 

  Review by Antun Kovacevic ★★★★ 12

  This wasn’t a film, this was more of an experience. I don’t think I ever saw anything similar to this film.
  To be honest, this wasn’t a groundbreaking film in many aspects (the script was bland and the acting was very questionable), but Gus Van Sant’s vision was genius. This film is definitely not for everyone because there’s not much happening in it. And the film chooses to spend most of its time just following its characters. That way Gus Van Sant didn’t give his characters a characterization or personality, he gave them the importance and a place in his world. He was telling us that those characters are just people who happened to be at that place at that…

• 

  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½ 2

  Elephant undertakes effectual protracted camerawork to characterise the mindlessness of violence which remains an evocative problem for a nation enamoured with firearms. Written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant and the winner of the Palme d'Or at the 56th Cannes Film Festival, it discerns the filmmaker principally basing his scenario on the Columbine High School massacre, which in 1999 resulted in the slaying of twelve students and one teacher, and has subsequently prompted a multiple of copycat infractions.

  It creates the illusion of expanse within cramped localities through the use of long shots and engages in duplicating events from alternative viewpoints, and the cinematography from Harris Savides provides an almost daydream-like atmosphere as the camera drifts ethereally along the…