21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Last Movie - noble and uneven, August 3, 2005
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.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Holy Mess!!!, July 7, 2010
This review is from: The Last Movie [VHS] (VHS Tape)
My review's title is derived from Allen Ginsberg's comment on his great friend Jack Kerouac's (unpublished in his lifetime) book VISIONS OF CODY. Ginsberg saw the flashes of brilliance in the King the Beat's book - like seeing flashes of lightening on the horizon. But he also realized it was raw, undisciplined, drug-induced writing that few people would understand. Only those who had bedded Kerouac might possibly grasp it. Ginsberg didn't say it in quite so polite a way, but the point is that the late, truly great Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE is a cinematic equivalent of an abstract artwork, much the same way Kerouac's CODY was.
Hopper loved abstract art and collected it all his life. THE LAST MOVIE is completely opposite the linear brilliance of EASY RIDER. Yes, it is confusing. Yes, it is jumbled up. Yes, it either makes little sense or is senseless throughout. Yes, it cannot hold a candle to EASY RIDER.
But having said all that, the film has its own flashes of brilliant lightening illumining its convoluted landscape. If the movie is confusing (which it most certainly is) then so is Life itself. If it is jumbled (which it is), then so is Life itself. If it is baffling and hard-to-figure-out, so is Life itself. Perhaps this was what Hopper's intent was: to make a movie about how movies have dominated not only Western culture, but it also shows film's seductive powers in the effects on the Peruvian village where Hollywood has just shot a Western, packs up and leaves. Hopper, a wrangler and stuntman, on the film-within-a-film stays behind and has his world turned upside down by the dichotomy between the real and the unreal. The movie shuns linear story-telling for a vertical form - and succeeds at this rather admirably.
SPOILER ALERT; The closing scene sums it all up. Don Gordon's character is talking about searching for gold in the Peruvian mountains to the Hopper character - and all his knowledge about finding gold, panning for it has come from the movie TREAURE OF SIERRA MADRE. For better or for worse, movies have dominated our lives and our learning.
This film is a noble attempt to create an abstract artwork in filmic form. While it does not succeed all that greatly, it is a great thing that Hopper at least tried to do something totally different with the canvas which was his film and the colors which were his characters and the beauty of the Peruvian scenery.
Now that Dennis Hopper has sadly left us, it would be sadder still if this movie were never released on DVD. We can hope!
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worth checking out at least once...., December 12, 2006
This review is from: The Last Movie [VHS] (VHS Tape)
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....
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