Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

While everyone seems to acknowledge the impact of Easy Rider, it doesn't seem like many people actually think it's a great movie. It helped make Jack Nicholson a star, it helped create the New Hollyood movement, but beyond that, I guess it's more likely to be buried in a time capsule to represent the '60s, much like Wall Street for the '80s or Reality Bites for the '90s. I think Roger Ebert nailed it pretty well in his Great Movies essay on it, acknowledging its lasting power, but having some fun at the expense of some of the more dated and obvious scenes:

One of their bikes needs work, and they borrow tools at a ranch, leading to a labored visual juxtaposition of wheel-changing and horse-shoeing. Then they have dinner with the weathered rancher and his Mexican-American brood, and Fonda delivers the first of many quasi-profound lines he will dole out during the movie: "It's not every man who can live off the land, you know. You can be proud." (The rancher, who might understandably have replied, "Who the hell asked you?" nods gratefully.)

So much of the movie defies the usual narrative conventions of Hollywood, it was a shame to see the hippies v. rednecks plot play such a huge role -- the southerners in this movie make Larry the Cable Guy look Socratic. Of course, that conflict was necessary to bring about the tragic end of Captain America and Billy, and I think their seeming martyrdom is what turns a lot of people off about the film, especially to those who are tired of hearing about the wonderful idealism of the '60s. Ebert cites Pauline Kael's review of the film in which she says

the movie's sentimental paranoia obviously rang true to a large, young audience's vision. In the late '60s, it was cool to feel that you couldn't win, that everything was rigged and hopeless.

But you also have to take into account Fonda's cryptic line, "We blew it" the night before they're killed. Apparently, Hopper has said that line referred to Captain America's feelings about their ill-gotten money, obtained through a cocaine deal at the beginning of the film. That, I think, at least makes the heroes culpable (and at least one of them is aware that they are culpable), and as Ebert pointed out in his original review in 1969, these supposedly anti-establishment heroes actually sold out by trying to get rich quick and base a lifestyle around money, even if they don't look the type. Taking that into account, the movie reads less like a tragic love letter to the '60s counterculture than a well-deserved nail in the coffin for it (the bad acid trip in the cemetery also supports that reading, I think).

One last observation: I liked Nicholson in the movie for the most part, except for his Very Important Speech about why "normal" people feel threatened by Captain America and Billy (again: another reason why you can understand people thinking the movie is too sympathetic to the hippies). Also, I didn't find his ramblings about aliens while stoned very funny, either. Maybe it's because I liked this version so much better, almost 25 years later: