Last Night

Somehow, the end of the world seems downright comforting when the Fifth Dimension play on the soundtrack. In Last Night, his debut as a feature director, Don McKellar shows more the slyness of his screenplay for 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould than the sentimentality of his script for The Red Violin. The result is a dry, black comedy about annihilation that seduces with its loopy insouciance and then overwhelms with its emotional commitment.

The lives and imminent deaths of a handful of Torontonians intersect as the world fumbles through its last six hours to the end, from inexplicable causes, at midnight (a clue might be the fact that there no longer is any night). Chief among these people is Patrick (McKellar, who could pass as Tom Hanks's forlorn brother), for whom the world ended some time ago, when his beloved died. After meeting with his family for "Christmas" (Sarah Polley is undistinguished in a cameo as his sister), Patrick returns home for a quiet apocalypse alone, but his solitude is disturbed by Sandra (Sandra Oh), a young woman whose agenda includes a bottle of bad wine and a mystery briefcase.

What follows is expected but somehow utterly surprising. Despite some coy whimsy at the beginning, McKellar makes the transition from droll irony to poignant tragedy with blithe assurance. Perhaps most moving is the dorky piano player whose desperate debut piano recital on doomsday seems a joke until he actually plays in the minutes before midnight and brings tears to the audience's eyes; similarly, Last Night starts with a giggle and ends with a bang.

-- Peter Keough