Last Night

It's hard to escape the psychological wake of this soul-searching allegory about how a dozen interwoven characters spend their last hours on Earth as the end of the world approaches. Last Night is hard to get into at first, but writer-director-actor Don McKellar patiently peels away the beautifully-drawn players' thick layers of frayed emotions as he builds an intense but strangely calm Armageddon atmosphere with eerily empty streets and parched colorfast photography (how the world will end is not explained, but it becomes clear the sun hasn't set for months). Vignettes include a family treating their doom like a holiday, a partying pair of newlyweds, a young rocker rushing to fulfill a sexual fantasy, and two deeply moving performances from Sandra Oh, as a devoted wife trying to get home to her husband, and McKellar himself as a lonely man full of spite and determined to spend his closing hours alone. The cast also includes Sarah Polley and David Cronenberg. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)