SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

GayFilmViewer "The Living End" pretty much launched The New Queer Cinema and began a whole new era of gay indie filmmaking.Unapologetically in your face, the tale of two HIV-positive lovers on the run is rough, edgy and totally LA punk (if you've never lived in Los Angeles, you might not appreciate the unreal quality of the city and its residents as presented here... the film is not as surreal as you think).This film is Araki's most Godardian, but with a humor all his own.Significantly cleaned-up, the remastered version currently on DVD is worth buying, even if you still have an older DVD/VHS copy in your collection.The movie is a joy from start to finish.

eric-974 By chance, this movie caught my attention late-night and I was lucky enough to watch from start to finish. As much of a docudrama as it is a character study from the early gay nineties, some people may find this flick utter crap, or at the very least, sophomoric. To those people, I suggest sticking to "Eight Below" or anything starring Reese Witherspoon.As the viewer, I felt transported back to 1992, having been 25 years old at the time this movie was released with no idea it even existed. The somewhat surrealistic, exploratory journey between the two main characters brings back so many memories from a time where such strange pairings and outrageous actions seemed to occur regularly. Whether you grew up in Dallas, LA, or New York makes no difference; chances are you knew any one of the characters from this film in some aspect.At times overtly philosophical, others completely abstract, the exploration of two peoples' mental struggle with HIV was at least done from an unflinching perspective. This is a case study in human nature, no matter how uncomfortable the subject matter. It also proves that the nature of the beast hasn't changed and that HIV/AIDs still isn't really a priority of the U.S. government...at least, not in any beneficial way to those afflicted. Be sure to stick around for the final message in the film credits and see if you can tell if anything has changed in the last fifteen years.As a special treat, if you've ever been a fan of industrial/electronica from the Wax Trax! label (among others), you'll recognize some great stuff, from Chris and Cosey, Coil, KMFDM, and even Psychic TV.

Merwyn Grote Let's see: Bad lighting. Ugly cinematography. Barely audible sound. Profanity laced dialogue. Amateurish performances. Protagonists whose bad behavior is supposed to represent TRUTH. Cameos by Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov. Yep, we are in the world of indie filmmaking, where the mere fact that a semi-coherent film even gets completed on a budget of a buck-ninety-two is considered an artistic achievement. THE LIVING END is a cult film and considered something a landmark of gay cinema to boot. Two guys, who are HIV+ positive, act out violently to protest ... well, to protest just about anything and everything immediately available. The "angry young gay man" syndrome is in play: We're here, we're queer, we're going to be annoying. It was pretty radical stuff for the time; pre-Ellen, pre-Will-&-Grace, pre-Queer Eye. Now, in the era of legalized gay marriage, this seems rather quaintly naive: more Hope and Crosby than Butch and Sundance, let alone Thelma and Louise. The problem is that, divorced from its historical context, THE LIVING END is just painfully mediocre at best and just plain bad much of the time. Even overlooking the fifth rate production values, you still have a contrived story, badly written, poorly directed and awkwardly acted. The tale involves Jon, who, on the day he learns he is HIV+, encounters Luke, a leather-jacketed stud on the run from freshly killing a trio of gay bashers. Jon is a nerd (he writes film reviews); Luke is a thug (he apparently has also killed a cop); and they head out on the road to who-knows-where. Luke claims he has fallen madly in love with Jon, while Jon seems gaga over Luke apparently because Luke looks hot in a leather jacket (and even hotter minus the jacket). Ultimately their road trip goes nowhere and little is done that couldn't have just as easily been done in Jon's cramped little apartment. Toss in a bothersome side story involving Jon's mother hen (read fag hag) best friend whose sex life goes south as she worries about Jon being AWOL, and the already threadbare narrative is revealed to be even flimsier. But to give it credit, THE LIVING END was something different in its time. It deals with gay rage, AIDS and gives us anti-heroes who are hardly role models, but at least aren't negative stereotypes from the straight point of view. The film is subtitled "An Irresponsible Film by Gregg Araki," and several of the scenes are provocative. Certainly director Araki is not interested in political correctness, particularly in the way he attempts to link sex and violence as a common impulse. Indeed, the film's most powerful moment comes at the end as it ties rape and suicide into one graphic image. The final scenes are jolting, especially considering the banality of the rest of the film. I want to be generous to this film because it is sincere and it is important within the subgenre of gay cinema. But it just isn't very good; there just isn't any nicer way to say it. THE LIVING END is a dead end.

mikenpeter It's difficult to make an 85 movie drag on, but somehow, Gregg Araki manages to do so with his amateurish direction. The plot is inspired, the cast is competent, but Araki ruins it with draggy direction and corny dialogue. Even talented and charismatic Mike Dytri can't save this clunker. By the time it got to the end, which I had heard so much about, I was ready to just turn it off and return the tape. It's very hard to care about the characters, likeable though they are, when every line of dialogue is punctuated by unnecessary pregnant pauses (a sure sign of incompetent direction). The film had great potential, but it came out as just a bunch of scenes slapped together with a really bad soundtrack (not the music: the volume kept jumping up and down alternating soft to loud from scene to scene).