Easy Rider (DVD)

'Easy Rider' is the best film made in the Sixties. I'm just throwing that one in to make sure I get some comments from fellow film fans. I will accept votes for 'The Wild Bunch', 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Lawrence of Arabia, but 'Easy Rider' is the one that makes it for me. It's a fairly plotless film, with some variable performances around the fringes (though a quartet of superb ones at the centre), the direction is sometimes too loose, and there are moments (particularly when Billy starts tripping out on LSD) when the film-makers are experimenting too self-consciously. But you can't get beyond it ...  Read the complete review

note: also appears on The Student Room in part Easy Rider is one of the most culturally significant films of the 1960s, but it's also a rather self indulgent and self consciously over-stylised effort that's got some decent insight, but is so often suffocated by the intrusive direction by Dennis Hopper, who also co-stars in the film with Peter Fonda. It's a very easy film to summarise - two bikers go on a road trip across America, getting extremely high, and attempting to fornicate with as many women as possible. In fact, it can be seen as something of a primitive "teen comedy", except it caters to a SLIGHTLY more mature crowd, given that ...  Read the complete review

Easy Rider – the 1969 classic is the latest entry to my (rather small) video collection. After seeing Easy Rider a few days ago I can now see what all the fuss was about… Two motorcyclists set off on a coast-to-coast road trip in hope of discovering and experiencing the real America. Along the way they pick up hitchhikers, smoke a joint here and there, get pissed every now and then and even visit a hippie commune. The two “hippie” motorcyclists are played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Fonder is the more relaxed of the two and perhaps the most messed up, Hopper appears slightly more edgy throughout most of the film. The ...  Read the complete review

Easy Rider is the original road movie, there were others before it, but in terms of the expression of the restless questing of a gneration it has no equal. The later part of the 60's was a time of social unrest and upheavel across the western world. It was a time when, for a brief while, young children believed that the world was changing and stood together to try and reshape that world. The generation of the 50's challenged their parent's authority, the generation of the 60's challenged the authority and necessity of the State. Society was experimenting with new ways of living. Personal expression and development was the order of the day, ...  Read the complete review

Have you ever wanted to cruise the highway, through a never ending landscape, with no sense of time? To feel the wide open road hug you to it's breast and the wind torrent, like a bursting river through your hair? If so, you'll warm instantly to the characters in this classic film. From the cool and sublimely relaxed Peter Fonda to the understated unbalance of a flying Dennis Hopper. Add to that partnership a devilishly engaging performance from a young Jack Nicholson and you have a group of people that you cannot possibly dislike. In essence the film is about free spirits, and their position within a world of closed minds. When the two clash the ...  Read the complete review