Read My review here: http://jacklfilmreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-movie-1971.html
The year was 1971, the Hollywood New Wave was in full swing, young directors were able to get decent sized budgets for their films as well as considerably more creative control than before. Never mind the so called Hollywood Golden
Age, this is when Hollywood really became interesting with directors like F.F Coppola, Martin Scoresese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Sam Peckinpah making some of the most acclaimed films in history, but sadly it didn't last, Blockbusters became the new "big thing" in the late 70's and a new age arrived, an age of successful Franchises like Indiana Jones and Star Wars.
1971 was a particularly great year for film, possibly one of the best for English language Cinema, with such classics as The French Connection, Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, Bananas, A Fistful Of Dynamite, Get Carter, Straw Dogs, Waterloo and Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
It was also the year 3 influential and important US directors made their debut's Eastwood with "Play Misty For Me", Spielberg with "Duel" and Lucas with "THX 1138".
But it was also marked by the release of Dennis Hopper's follow up to the wildly successful Easy Rider (1969), The Last Movie, which resulted in Hopper being persistently ignored for many years until achieving a memorable come-back in the 80's with his performance in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" and his film "Colors".
Hopper wasn't exactly black listed, but he did get thrown out of MGM and received much bad press and criticism from critics and audience alike over The Last Movie, which is surprising as it won The Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, but then again Europe has always been more welcoming of avant-garde type films than the US.
"One just has to look at three of the best US films, all three failed to win Best Picture at the Oscars, which they deserved, but went on to win the Palme D'Or at Cannes...Taxi Driver (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Pulp Fiction (1994)."
Even now The Last Movie is considered a terrible film by many, and a messy film by many more. It holds a pretty low score on IMDb which is quite rare, and has even been included in many "Worst Films" lists.
It has been criticised for it's vague and wandering narrative, it's somewhat explicit imagery, some have called it "laughable", others "a waste of time" and "misogynistic".
In a way this is an experimental film, one that pushes the viewers perception of what a film is supposed to be, it offers whole new idea's and techniques and makes several interesting points while still being aloof and almost unintelligible. This avant-garde experimental style that pervades the film wasn't originally present, of course the film was hardly mainstream as it is made by the great rebel Dennis Hopper but it was certainly more accessible before he showed it to his friend and fellow director Alejandro Jorodowsky, who urged him to re-edit the film and make it less comprehensible and more experimental, which is exactly what Hopper did.
The rest is here: http://jacklfilmreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-movie-1971.html
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February 3, 2011
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