★ 7 / 10
The Savage Brilliance of "The Last New Year's Eve"
Anyone familiar with Niccolò Ammaniti's fiction knows it from the very first frames: "The Last New Year's Eve" is not interested in restraint, subtlety, or…
Anyone familiar with Niccolò Ammaniti's fiction knows it from the very first frames: "The Last New Year's Eve" is not interested in restraint, subtlety, or comfort. From the opening credits, the film announces itself as loud, irreverent, and deliberately excessive, fully embracing the dissacrating spirit that has always defined Ammaniti's literary universe. What unfolds is not merely an adaptation, but a cinematic amplification of his bleak, abrasive vision of an Italian society perpetually teetering on the edge of collapse. Ammaniti's stories have long stood out for their rawness and their pitiless portrayal of a country riddled with moral decay, emotional immaturity, and latent violence. In "The Last New Year's Eve", he arguably reaches the peak of this worldview by blending a gothic sensibility with the corrosive tones of black comedy. The film revolves around the manic organization of a New Year's Eve party meant to be, in true Italian fashion, "the party to end all parties." Yet this obsessive pursuit of excess and spectacle soon mutates into a perfect storm, one capable of triggering a catastrophe that feels disturbingly plausible. It is no coincidence that the original title of the story was "The Last New Year of Humanity": the sense of an imminent, self-inflicted apocalypse permeates every scene. Director Marco Risi proves to be the ideal interpreter of this material. He captures the essence of Ammaniti's writing with disarming fidelity, refusing to soften its rough edges or dilute its provocation. One can easily imagine the scandal such a film must have caused in the respectable, Catholic Italy of the late 1990s, where public morality still demanded a certain decorum, at least on the surface. "The Last New Year's Eve" tears that surface apart with gleeful brutality, exposing hypocrisy, vulgarity, and a collective appetite for self-destruction masquerading as celebration. Perhaps this is precisely why the film has enjoyed so little exposure in the decades since its release. In nearly thirty years, "The Last New Year's Eve" has surfaced only sporadically on television, usually relegated to late-night slots, and today it remains surprisingly difficult to find even on streaming platforms. It has become a kind of cinematic ghost: rarely discussed, often forgotten, and yet unsettlingly relevant. What makes the film so enduring is its grotesque energy. For roughly one hundred minutes, Risi unleashes a barrage of absurd situations, moral ugliness, and characters pushed to the brink of caricature, without ever tipping fully into fantasy. The grotesque here is not an escape from reality, but a distortion that makes reality sharper and more painful. The explosive finale, in every sense of the word, is not merely a shock tactic, but the logical endpoint of a society portrayed as incapable of moderation, empathy, or foresight. My advice is unequivocal: seek out "The Last New Year's Eve" and watch it carefully. Beneath its excess and provocation lies a brutally honest reflection on the Italian psyche, one that resonates even more strongly today. If you are Italian-or if you have ever spent a New Year's Eve in a large Italian city-you will immediately recognize the volatile mixture of euphoria, chaos, and recklessness that the film so mercilessly dissects. Ammaniti and Risi remind us that when a "proper Italian party" spirals out of control, the distance between celebration and disaster can be frighteningly short.
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★ 9 / 10
An absurdist Italian comedy that really works...
tccandler
L'Ultimo Capodanno (ITA) Die Entfesselte Silvesternacht (GER) The Last New Year's Eve (ENG)I've seen it written on movie posters. I've seen 'quote whore…
L'Ultimo Capodanno (ITA) Die Entfesselte Silvesternacht (GER) The Last New Year's Eve (ENG)I've seen it written on movie posters. I've seen 'quote whore critics' use it on the back of DVD cases. I hear the trailer voice-over guys use it all the time. I've never much cared for the phrase. I have never once, in any of my many reviews, used it to describe a film.Nope, I am not talking about "tour-de-force". I am not talking about "gay romp". I am definitely not talking about "truimph of the human spirit".However, "L'Ultimo Capodanno" is an UPROARIOUS COMEDY!!!Here is another first... I watched this film in Italian with German subtitles. I don't understand much Italian and I definitely don't know how to read much German. But somehow, with the two combined, I managed to get about 90% of what I was watching.Why was I doing this? Well, "L'Ultimo Capodanno" is a pretty damn obscure film and I had no choice. I wanted to see it as part of my mission to see every film that one of my favorite actresses, Monica Bellucci, has ever done -- and so this would have to do until I get my hands on an English-subtitled version.Frankly, I had fun trying to keep up. It was a great experiment in language recognition. Occasionally, I paused it and went back to see if I could catch something that went too fast. And for the most part... I figured it out. I only ever had real trouble with a handful of lengthy conversations.The many stories take place on New Year's Eve. There is a dude dressed in a bird outfit hassling man driving a Jeep. There is a lost notebook. There is a suicide attempt. There are some hallucinating stoners with sticks of dynamite. There is an aging countess who entertains younger male escorts. There is a beautiful young woman who, while wearing only a bra, discovers her husband is cheating on her via the answering machine. There is a strangely happy family obsessing about a vintage car. There is a prostitute getting kinky with a married business man who is into assless leather chaps, high-heels and nipple-clamps. There are three gangsters, one of which looks like a Sean Penn, Elvis Presley and Lyle Lovett combo. There are urine fetishes, paint-sniffing highs and ghosts of dead mothers, severed hands, crossbow shootings, falling Christmas trees & firework fatalities. Come to think of it, this film has at least one of everything that your imagination can conjour up.Somehow, all the stories and characters intertwine. Every damn one of them is seemingly headed for disaster as the night winds down!If Robert Altman & Paul Thomas Anderson teamed up for a crazy comedy, this is what it would look like. Multiple story lines. A random hodgepodge of oddball characters. Moments of cinematic brilliance -- most notably a ferocious glare from Monica Bellucci & an inspired comedic moment with a wig.I am willing to bet that more than 99% of people who will ever read this review will never come across this movie in a video store or on TV. To watch it, you'd probably have to go out of your way to buy it -- but it is worth the effort. It was a surreal and tremendously enjoyable experience -- I can't wait to get the English-subbed version someday so I can catch up on all the details I missed this time around.You might question my reviewing this film. But you know what, even if I did understand all the dialogue, this film is so weird, wild and wacky that I still wouldn't understand half of what I was watching. It is a crazy flick with an absurdly over-the-top ending -- and I dug everything about it.TC Candler IndependentCritics.com
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★ 10 / 10
Extreme trip
pudli
I can not understand, why nobody mention this movie, and was not even released. I would be the first who buys it.The idea is great, (similar than Magnolia, or…
I can not understand, why nobody mention this movie, and was not even released. I would be the first who buys it.The idea is great, (similar than Magnolia, or Amores Perros) the pictures are very very nice.It would fit into the top 10!! of new age movies like Trainspotting, Req. for a dream etc.See it, let it hold your hand...
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6.1/10
1.4K
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