Dennis Hopper Movie:

The Last Movie Reviews:
Henry Fonda was wrong
2008-05-14 - I heard Peter Fonda say that even though his father Henry Fonda didn't like Dennis Hopper that after he read 'The Last Movie' he said, "this is one of the great westerns of our time." Well, Hank may have been right about what was on the page but what ended up on film was a cluttered mess. I am a fan of Dennis Hopper somewhat but no matter how you slice it or how much his Hollywood friends try to dress it up this movie stunk. I bought it back in the early 90's and watched it. I gave it to a friend to watch and he never gave it back and I didn't care one bit. El stinkerOO!!!

Worth checking out at least once....
2006-12-13 - This is Dennis Hopper's notorious follow up to Easy Rider. It's a film that shook studio executives to the core because it was such a mess in their eyes. Essentially, after Easy Rider became the massive hit that it was, Universal Studios gave Hopper carte blanche to make his next film. They gave him a million dollars, and the crew went to Peru to make their film. Hopper came back with roughly 40 hours of footage, took nearly a year to edit, and came up with what you see here. It won best picture at the Venice Film Festival, but it bombed in the US, and Hopper descended into drug induced madness for many years. He didn't step behind a camera until Out of the Blue, an independent film shot around 1980. Is the film any good? It has some great scenes, some pretentious moments (such as title cards saying "scene missing", an old trick that student filmmakers use to show us their film is "profound"), some good performances, great photography (courtesy of Laslo Kovacs), a rather stupid story, and it doesn't make an ounce of sense (not even in an art film way). Still, it's interesting to watch. Considering Hopper was stoned out of his mind and thousands of miles away in Peru when he made the film, Universal was lucky to get a finished cut at all (which they were probably grateful for, until they saw the film). It's worth checking out at least once....

The Last Movie - noble and uneven
2005-08-04 - At least half of THE LAST MOVIE is a brilliant film. The idea of cutting between the making of a Western, the Western itself, and even the making of "the real movie" about these things has certainly been imitated since, but here is the original. A further plot point has the Peruvian local natives deciding to make a movie based on what they've seen, constructing cameras and booms out of cane. They cast Hopper's character in the lead, but have no understanding that violence is faked in Hollywood. Hopper will be the film's sacrifice. Eventually all three narrative threads deconstruct completely.

Where the film goes wrong is that much of its brilliance is also its weakness. Clearly improvised, certain scenes fall flat and certain shots are probably fascinating on particular drugs, but the sober viewer will be challenged by their length and content. There is no question that this is a drug-soaked production. At times maddeningly narcissistic, I have still seen this picture several times and would love to own a DVD of it.

What ? Huh . . . . ?
2003-06-11 - It's just too bad the natives only had stick cameras, they probably could have done a better job. I watched this movie because I wanted to see what caused Dennis Hopper's demise with the studios after the success of "Easy Rider". Disjointed, boring, interesting somewhat, really bad lighting and sound. It's a star-studded borefest. Would be great if Mr. Hopper would re-release a new version that made sense. But maybe that's the point. I am grateful Dennis Hopper survived "The Last Movie" to give us what is, to date, a rich an entertaining body of work.