The Last Five Years (The Movie, The Thread)

I have to strongly disagree. I found this to be a fantastic film with fantastic direction. It was clearly his passion piece, and he had a deep understanding of the piece. The staging of the numbers made them feel fresh, and even though I know pretty much every word and every note, it felt like discovering the piece anew. Yet pretty much every choice was in accordance with the text. It was wonderfully done, and I'll be watching it again soon.

But...the song is him singing to a woman in his bed that isn't his wife. So if he's not a philanderer, he's still an adulterer.

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I agree that muddles his "justification" for the cheating, which was a misdirection (as you originally stated). I don't think it changes the major point of the song.

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I just finished watching the movie. I thought it was good, for the most part. Though, it would have GREATLY benefitted by adding more dialogue, as the little bit that they did add in really helped me get more into the story and added much more of a cinematic feel. The way it almost always just goes straight into the next song was the wrong choice (in my opinion). Both Anna and Jeremy did great work.

I enjoyed the way most of the songs were staged. A few I thought were the great choices (A Part of That, Moving Too Fast, A Summer in Ohio, NNTK), others I thought were safe and pretty boring (ICDBTT, Schmuel, TNTM), but overall, I very much enjoyed it. I can't complain too much, as a movie being made was so unlikely anyways, I'm just glad it ended up actually happening.

" not surprised that they had such a major problem getting distribution for this."

What are you talking about? It's being distributed how they want to. They don't want to over distribute it, because it's a very niche film and no matter what they did it wasn't goin to be a huge seller because they made it strictly for fans of the musical and if anyone else happened to come along and fall in love with it, awesome! This was one of, if not the first movie at TIFF (i'm pretty sure it was the first) to get a distribution deal, even before it had its first screening, and for a movie that's so little, being released after only a year and a half since it wrapped filming is pretty amazing. You're just talking out of your ass.

Re: nobody needs to know, first off, in see i'm smiling, cathy says "little girlfriendS" plural, so it's a justified choice imo. But also, from Richard at the Q&A after the screening I was at, he explained why he chose multiple women for that scene. I took audio of the q&a so i'll just transcribe, because he said jason asked him why too. "I looked at the lyrics. And the truth, it felt to me. In a miracle would happen, he's suddenly famous, now a guy who has that ego, who's suddenly being recognized for his talent, and all he sees are the women, so logically, to me, the process would be, first he starts having meaningless sex, meaningless affairs, and then of course they become empty and then he starts to go, he finds one where he says 'I need to be in love with someone /maybe/ I could be in love with you' so to me, it felt like a more honest approach to it, than just one woman he immediately falls in love with right after her. where he goes through that process of just having sex, and say it doesn't mean anything, and then obviously he gets further and further away from her, it just felt like a more honest way of doing it"

Updated On: 2/13/15 at 12:53 PM

I'm happy it's finally out, and people can (legally, please) watch it. It's great to see a little musical make it to the big and small screen. Hopefully it'll convince a lot of these smaller shows invest in leaping to the screen via independent cinema routes. Much like theatre itself, it doesn't have to be a big, splashy thing, to be effective.

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"What are you talking about? It's being distributed how they want to."

It's common knowledge this had many, many issues finding a distributor, which is why it wasn't released until 20 months after filming wrapped. All kinds of problems.

Yes, the film did indeed have a rough time finding a domestic distributor. That would be hard to argue, considering it really wasn't a big secret.

It is ok. A curiosity that will eventually make its way to the WTF section of Netflix. I agree with @best12bars regarding Jeremy Jordan. I don't understand why anyone felt the need to make this into a film.

Just finished watching it three times in a row on pay per view, and have many thoughts.

If you are one of those spoiler people, stop reading this post right now.


A general note. That movie is damned confusing if you don't know the show. I think the should have put up subtitles before each song, at the top "Before," during Shiska Godesss "After," and then "Before," and then "After," and during the middle section "Now." I think it would have made the whole movie less confusing.

I thought the opening "I'm Still Hurting" was devastating. While Anna Kendrick doesn't have the smooth, luscious pipes of Sherie Renee Scott, I thought her acting was impeccable, and her singing was totally fine. I liked that LaGravanese used bleach bypass stock to film that opening, it showed that that was the past, then
Shiska Goddess was in full color, which gave you a clue that the two stories were happening in reverse chronology.

I also liked the fact that the two were almost always on screen together. In the musical, they never talk to each other until the duet in the middle. In the movie, there were always together, even though they didn't sing together.

It did get very confusing. That "Story of Schmuel" number should have never, ever happened. It stops both the show and the film dead.

Then I was confused during the film about her audition scene. First you see her having a great audition (in front of Sherie Renee Scott, Kurt Deutch and Bernie Telsey, which is a cute inside joke). But her story is supposed to be happening backwards, and then you see her to a bad audition for the same show, and finally doing the worst audition (with a cute cameo from Jason Robert Brown as the accompanist), but wouldn't it happen the other way around? If she had that crappy audition she never would have been called back. And by the way, was she auditioning in front of the set of "Avenue Q"? It looked like it.

I did like the fact that Jeremy Jordan's character was the bad guy. In the stage show, they both come off as guilty, the movie realty paints him as the villain. And I thought that worked.

One other thing. Where in Central Park is that Gazebo that they filmed "Next Ten Minutes" in? I've lived next to Central Park for 30 years, that Gazebo doesn't exist. It just seemed strange because that whole Central Park number which references many things (the San Remo, the Dakota, John Lennon) did not seem to be filmed in Central Park at all.

Still, on the whole, I think its a pretty terrific film version of that musical.

"Jordan, I purchased it on iTunes, and it was in 2.35 aspect ratio."

Thank you! I knew it had to be formatted wrong for pay-per-view on stupid Time Warner.

Thanks for the info, because it looked like the wrong ratio on my TV as well.