>>>>"This was {actor's name}'s last film before he died" How the hell many films did he make after his death!?
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>>>That's not so odd considering that "last" can also mean "." Now "final film before he died" would be redundant.
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>>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".
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>I think you're missing my point. "last film before he died" means "final film." "Last film" by itself might mean "most recent film."

Actually we agree, just coming from different directions. I just wanted to show how often we need to throw in extra words just to avoid unneeded meanings, and tried to prove that via reductio ad absurdum.