Popular reviews

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  Review by christian d ★★★★ 6

  Now this is what I call a film noir. Holy shit, what a firecracker. I was instantly hooked while watching this because it was right up my alley. And well yeah, no fucking shit it was, it was my two favourite things when it comes to movies: sleazineas and cheesiness. Don Johnson is cooler than cool, Jennifer Connolly is cuter than cute and Virginia Madsen is an absolute sex-pot, shaving her legs while on the phone, as well as driving around in a pink Cadillac. Everybody is sweating, smoking and shagging while spouting cool, sexy and seductive dialogue. And to top it all off, the whole runtime of this bad boy is accompanied by a slapping blues/jazz soundtrack. I really…

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  Review by BeardofTsu ★★★★ 2

  Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen are the main reason to watch this Dennis Hopper-directed neo-noir. They're both so damn sexy but Virginia Madsen is so sizzling hot that she almost melts the screen! Blackmailing Don Johnson with that accent and shaving her legs while on the phone really hits the spot. This is perhaps one of the sweatiest films I have ever seen everyone is sweating buckets clothes just drenched in sweat in this pressure cooker of a story. Simmers quite nicely until it finally explodes. It's an above-average neo-noir with good performances from the three main players even Don Johnson finds his level as sleazy and extremely horny criminal Harry Maddox. Loved the score and ending too! Hopper is at his very best here with the direction, well worth checking out this underrated gem.

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  Review by theironcupcake ★★★★★ 26

  "Cheer up, buddy. Chicken don't always lay its eggs in the same nest."

  Sunday Mini-Collab w/ AJ
  Women Film Editors #206: Wende Phifer Mate
  (Previous review here.)

  What a treat to be back in the welcoming swamp of late Saturday night collabs with AJ as we enjoyed Dennis Hopper's underrated neo-noir classic The Hot Spot! It has the most fantastic blend of sunbaked, dusty atmosphere and slow-burning crime-drama sleaze as dreamy dirtbag Don Johnson, femme fatale Virginia Madsen and ray of light Jennifer Connelly navigate an especially bewitching lust triangle. Last time I watched this, I wondered if 130 minutes was too excessive a running time for such pulp; now I feel it works just fine, a necessary choice to…

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  Review by Amy Hensarling ★★★½ 28

  Thoroughly enjoyed this. Blind bought it on blu-ray & glad I did. Deserves to be experienced in HD. 

  Stray thoughts:

  -Was there anyone hotter than Jennifer Connelly in the 90s? No. Correct answer is no.

  -Ebert: “I feel at home in movies like The Hot Spot. They come out of that vast universe formed by the historic meeting of B movies and the idea of film noir—films about the soft underbelly of the human conscience […] Only movie lovers who have marinated their imaginations in the great B movies from RKO and Republic will recognize The Hot Spot as a superior work in an old tradition—as a manipulation of story elements as mannered and deliberate, in its way, as variations on…

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  The 80s and 90s Neo-Noir Project

  A bit of an old favourite from my younger days, but I think mostly due to the HUUUUGE crush I had on Jennifer Connelly there for about 2 years.

  Pretty much anything she was in that I saw around that time became a favourite of some description, even Inventing The Abbotts, which was a boring load of old crap. Mind you, that had the added bonus of having Liv Tyler in it as she became my next huge crush over the next 2 years. It was a passing of the torch, if you will.

  Of course, Connelly is still absolutely stunning both in The Hot Spot and in the present day, but this rewatch…

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★

  a liquor soaked, cigarette stained, sexually charged sweaty southern masterclass, hopper's less interested in making a cohesive or tense noir and far more interested in just establishing mood and filming people fuck, which makes it the least tense but most thrilling noir. it stretches an interesting 90 minute story into a 130 minute epic and really does nothing with the extra time but spend miscellaneous sequences with his cast, gets more plot heavy in its third act as expected but it's refreshing to see a movie that wants you to relax and soak in its world, and also look at don johnson's ass. plus it's the horniest goddamn movie imaginable, it's not played for camp which somehow works here but…

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  Review by comrade_yui ★

  sorry dennis hopper, i don't believe anyone would actually be dumb enough to cheat on the incarnated angel of beauty that is jennifer connelly

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★ 5

  Is there a greater year for a director to have two films than Dennis Hopper having Catchfire and The Hot Spot both release in 1990? I get why people balk at the 130 minute runtime on this one - the narrative sustains barely 2/3 of that - but there's few things I relish more than moody, sweaty, dusty neo-noirs where characters predominantly bullshit each other in between bed-breaking marathons and fisticuffs.

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★ 5

  Have you ever watched a film just to see one of your favourite actors or actresses shed their clothes? Just me then. The Hot Spot was one of the legendary hellraiser Dennis Hopper's directorial ventures, and his neo-noir had three very attractive leads to propel this steamy Texas set love-triangle. Don Johnson was still a hot property back in 1990 following his five year stint as Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, and his fame and time in the spotlight had clearly led to delusions that he could actually act. Virginia Madsen and Jennifer "God she was hot" Connelly however, both play their parts as equally different manipulators of Johnson's affections. We get a robbery, blah blah blah, some dialogue, and…

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  Review by Adam Hursey ★★★★ 3

  Support Your Local Library April 2023

  Last November, I tried to participate in Noir-vember, but I quickly remembered that, try as I may, I just don’t care much for much noir. Occasionally I’ll come across one I do like, such as Nightmare Alley. But, overall, I just don’t get much out of the genre.

  However, for some unexplained reason, I do like neo-noir. I can’t explain it. Neo-noir follows the same formula as noir, just presented in a more modern package. Maybe I just gravitate to more modern acting styles for these types of stories.

  Directed by Dennis Hopper, The Hot Spot is another solid neo-noir, this time served up Southern fried. Don Johnson plays the man with a plan who…

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★

  Hopper's photography background on full display here in this neon-and-candy-coated throwback, a genuine hard-boiled dime novel on film of the sort that they had stopped making by '90 (no wonder it bombed, apart from the fact that Johnson and Madsen didn't really do publicity for it, apparently) the same year punk broke, overall - but more than retrograde, if you're familiar with Hopper, you'll recognize the streak of masculine self-loathing on full display here, in a narrative about how the little dreams of an oversized testosterone soaked ego lead inevitably to the hell of getting what you want, that, as Chris Rock put it 'Life is LONG'

  
  (Also, for a film like this to work, it has to have a soundtrack calibrated just so. This film's soundtrack NAILS it)

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  Review by theironcupcake ★★★★½ 4

  "That was more fun than eating cotton candy barefoot."

  You better buckle up if you're going to watch this neo-noir directed by Dennis Hopper. The Hot Spot was adapted by Nona Tyson and Charles Williams from Williams' 1953 novel Hell Hath No Fury, the screenplay having been completed thirteen years before Williams' death in 1975. Apparently the cast expected Hopper to shoot an entirely different story, a heist yarn that he abruptly dropped and replaced with Williams' plot three days before production began, but regardless of how it came about, the drama ended up a minor masterwork.

  When Harry Madox (Don Johnson) rolls into the dusty little town of Landers, Texas, it seems like a pretty tame place to settle down. Before…