Word: hoppers
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...front of Easy Rider (Brattle Theater). Given Dewitt's current endeavor, it was the perfect choice, a classic film about the groovy days of the late 60s and early 70s. Easy Rider tells the story of two long-haired hippie weirdos, Captain America and Billy (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper), who raise money from a cocaine deal and travel across the country to see Mardi Gras. On their way, they encounter loads of interesting people: a bunch of city kids living communally on an Indian reservation, outraged and fearful hicks, a drunken lawyer who believes in UFOs and two maternal...
Wanna: Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet. It's a strange world, isn't it? Hopper gives the performance of a lifetime and then gets nominated for Hoosiers, which is Rocky in hightops. Life can be pretty cruel. But Hopper could walk off with the award just out of Academy spite. And let's hope he spews Pabst Blue Ribbon over the whole worthless bunch of them...
...only is the plot hackneyed, so are most of the characters, ranging from the affable old lady (that smiles benevolently throughout the whole movie like a catatonic overgrown Cabbage Patch doll) to the good natured town drunk/basketball maven, played by Dennis Hopper. While certainly a change from his role of homicidal maniac in Blue Velvet, Hopper's performance--though often rather forced--has easily the most depth of any in the movie. His controlled energy and powerful screen presence do much to stabilize the film...
...Hopper probably would have been able to do even more had he been given an adequate script with which to work, one not partial to such two-sentence Stallonian profundities as, Man One: "I hope it works out this time." Man Two: "It's gotta work out this time, or that's it for good...
...similar spirit moves in his actors. Hackman is wonderful as an inarticulate man tense with the struggle to curb a flaring, mysterious anger. Barbara Hershey is just as fine as a teacher trying to put a dispassionate face on a passionate nature. And Dennis Hopper brings some fresh, forceful observation and a jittery melancholy to his characterization of a onetime star athlete who has become the town drunk. There is a quirky authenticity about these figures, and the landscape they inhabit, that one does not expect to find in movies whose chief business is to warm the heart...