>>"This was {actor's name}'s last film before he died" How the hell many films did he make after his death!?
>
>That's not so odd considering that "last" can also mean "." Now "final film before he died" would be redundant.

Trying to imagine the other meaning in the sentence, I get "this was {actor's name}'s most recent film before he died"... and it would imply that he had more recent films after he died, which wouldn't make sense, so "last" was obviously used in the meaning of "final".

Goes fine with my permanent rant against the ambiguity of English - just shows the hoops we usually jump through to avoid it.