Rating: 
Summary: Incredible Film
Review: Easily one of the best films of the 1970s. Shot in beautiful black and white, the film conveys the emptiness of the small Texas town. The DVD feature is interesting with its added commentary. The story shows the struggles of real people and the troubles they endure. People who sing the praises of "Magnolia" would do well to partake in a viewing of The Last Picture Show. The drama and humor unfolds beautifully, and the characters seem much more rounded than PT Anderson's ensemble piece. Many may not draw the correlation between the two films, but one can easily do so: Both are about human drama, but the human drama is so real in The Last Picture Show, that we see ourselves in each of the characters. Also, when people tout such new "films," I think back to the 70's and see how none of them compare to this flawless diamond. It manages to squeak by the Lonesome Dove series as the best adaptation of Larry McMurtry's work.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Movie, An Awful Reality
Review: For me there are two kinds of depressing movies, there are the kind that make you want to go out and kill yourself, and then there are the kind that just kind of numb you into beleiving that in your life you will never find meaning or fulfillment. This film falls squarely in the latter category. This film, along with Pekinpah's "The Wild Bunch" and Leone's "Once upon a time in the West" make up the core cannon of the death of the west movies yet they view it from very different angles. This film focus's on the death of the innocence of small town middle America as those few rugged individuals who had the courage to seek some sort of answer and fulfilment to their lives who were once thought to populate the west are dying off and leaving behind a dissalusioned populace without compassion, decency, and being slaves to their passions and not masters of their fates.Set in a small town in Texas and loosely following the odyssey of one young man (Sonny) and his interaction with his fellow man (and most importantly woman) over the course of one year in 1951. Sonny isn't anything real special, just a mediocre high school football co-captain with a girlfriend he doesn't really like and who is about to graduate and likely work for the local oil drillers. Some notable traits do immediately become apparent in Sonny however, namely his apparent compassion and comoradery for an outcast mentally retarded boy, and the shine which a strong likeable old cowboy type (Sam) has taken to him. Sonny is at that terrifying stage in life where a person just begins to realize what an awful place the world really is and how awful most people in it really are. We see his flounderings through his reach towards maturity by means of his affair with his coach's wife, his indiscretions with his best friends ex, and his contemplation on the words of the old timer Sam.
There are other characters given almost as much screentime as Sam leading to multiple subplots, this movie follows the "Winesberg Ohio" model of painting smalltown life thorugh the rich tapestry of the individuals that compose it. Thematically this movie is all about the loss of innocence, of the west certainly, but also of man in general. One of the most painful aspects of growing up is realizing that hardly anyone is truly what they seem. The movie seems to look most favorably on the outlooks of those who least try to conceal what they are and simply deal with themselves and their fellowman honestly, and this is certainly not a bad view to take; to view yourself and the world around you as it really is without a lense. And yet, the movie shows the barreness of such a view, ultimately leaving itself relatively unresolved. The movie behaves exactly as it should, and as a result is a joy to watch. Still, you do leave feeling as though you've just run a marathon through a murky swamp believing nothing and no one to be innocent. This might be true, but even if no one is innocent (which seems likely) hopefully we won't fall into mere mediocrity and keep striving for some kind of innocence. A must see for any lovers of existentialist philosophy and lovers of beautifully depressing cinema.
Rating:
Summary: From a young persons view...
Review: I believe that this is my favorite film ever. I've seen and experienced (through an extensive teenage-hood of working in video stores)a lot of films. For some reason, this film captures a simplicity I hope to someday find. It's in black and white, which usually is a turn-off for me, but there is something about the visual "slowness" that makes it perfect in this way....this film wouldn't be the same in color. It's about love and desire and how the aches of life altering events alter ones' perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie - then, and now
Review: I first saw The Last Picture Show in the early 1970's - I was still in high school at the time. It was the kind of movie that left me a bit unsettled and a little confused, but kept me wondering and thinking about it. I recently decided to get the movie and watch it for a second time, some thirty-one years later. There were some scenes and dialog that I remembered quite well, and some of the same feelings that I experienced during my first viewing reemerged as I watched once again. I was, however, able to capture some fresh insights and perspectives on the movie during my second viewing - perhaps because there were scenes that I had forgotten about, or maybe because I have thirty additional years of life experience with which to make sense out of it this time. Although the movie appears to primarily focus on what it was like to "come of age" or transition to adulthood in the early 1950's in a small Texas town, I think that it actually uses this backdrop to explore some of life's lessons: making choices about what people think they want or need, experiencing the consequences that ensue from these choices, and how people cope with these consequences. The story places at its hub three high school students finishing their senior year and then going forward into young adulthood. It is essentially composed of vignettes with interactions that they have amongst themselves, their parents and adult acquaintances, and their peers, while the setting of the small town and life in the early 50's serves as the underlying connectedness to each of them. As the young adults explore the dilemmas and emotional ups and downs of making their first "grown-up" decisions, an interesting contrast becomes apparent with the older adults of the town, many of whom are still coming to grips with the decisions and experiences that they had when they were young adults. It seems to me that the story shows, first hand, in brutally honest and graphic ways, how learning to make your way in life and get along with others is truly a life-long process, and how trust and friendship can provide a much-needed safety net as part of this process.
Rating:
Summary: A Magnificent Depiction of Small-Town Texas
Review: I first saw this film when it was released in '71, when I was 13. Seeing it again over 30 years later, I realize what an incredibly powerful piece of work it is. For people who say it lacks plot and drama, I say there's plenty of it; it's just that the overwhelming talent of each and every actor in the piece brings the characters to the forefront. The accompanying feature dealing with the making of the movie is a revelation. Do you know whose idea it was to shoot the film in black and white (you'll never guess)? Did you know that one of the actor's performances saved a young man from committing suicide? This documentary shows how a masterpiece of film is created by one part luck and three parts hard work. I can't say enough about this stunning work of art; it's truly monumental.
Rating:
Summary: DvD extra ties movie together
Review: I have all 3 versions of this movie, but the DVD is the best. There are short 30 second shots that tie movie together, and extra shots to round out the movie. The Productions notes have great insights like, Abilene was to be played by Jimmy Dean of "Big Bad John" fame If you like this movie, Texasville is the story 20 years later.
Rating:
Summary: 'LAST PICTURE SHOW' haunting, tragic, A-class film
Review: If you are not from a small, rural community, consistently branded "in the middle of nowhere", then you could not possibly understand "The Last Picture Show". I'm from a small town in Kansas, and I was always wondering if anyone had ever depicted what life is like in a town of less than 2.000 people in the movies or a book. Now I know someone has, McMurtry and Bagdanovich. "Last Picture Show" is very realistic, and perfectly in tune with what life is like in a town that is dried and dying. Following the exploits of the characters of "The Last Picture Show" as they go about their lives and try to find some amusement in their ailing town, the film mirrors life as I knew it back home, desperate to find reason to leave, but unable to uproot yourself from your community. Decadence errodes innocence, love and life slip away, lonely become loneliest, ignorance and isolation become habit, and the movie theater closes down. Nothing more needs to be said... "The Last Picture Show" is a rare movie indeed. Filmed all in black and white, beautifully filmed, incredible performances by Timothy Bottoms, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybil Shepard, "The Last Picture Show" is a haunting as it is tragic. The death of small town America sadly isn't a story, or a film, but very real to those who live it. "The Last Picture Show" isn't just the testament of it, it is the experience of it.
Rating:
Summary: 'LAST PICTURE SHOW' haunting, tragic, A-class film
Review: If you are not from a small, rural community, consistently branded "in the middle of nowhere", then you could not possibly understand "The Last Picture Show". I'm from a small town in Kansas, and I was always wondering if anyone had ever depicted what life is like in a town of less than 2.000 people in the movies or a book. Now I know someone has, McMurtry and Bagdanovich. "Last Picture Show" is very realistic, and perfectly in tune with what life is like in a town that is dried and dying. Following the exploits of the characters of "The Last Picture Show" as they go about their lives and try to find some amusement in their ailing town, the film mirrors life as I knew it back home, desperate to find reason to leave, but unable to uproot yourself from your community. Decadence errodes innocence, love and life slip away, lonely become loneliest, ignorance and isolation become habit, and the movie theater closes down. Nothing more needs to be said... "The Last Picture Show" is a rare movie indeed. Filmed all in black and white, beautifully filmed, incredible performances by Timothy Bottoms, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybil Shepard, "The Last Picture Show" is a haunting as it is tragic. The death of small town America sadly isn't a story, or a film, but very real to those who live it. "The Last Picture Show" isn't just the testament of it, it is the experience of it.
Rating:
Summary: An American classic
Review: In this nostalgic, atmospheric study of small town life in the fifties as seen a generation later, filmed on location in Wichita Falls and Archer City, Texas (from a novel by the incomparable Larry McMurtry), the force of slow, inevitable change is symbolized in the showing of the last picture at the local movie house. That last picture show, incidentally, is Howard Hawks' celebrated Western, Red River (1948) starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. Well, the movie houses came back to life as multiplexes charging eight bucks a pop, but the Western movie died out, and the boys watching that movie went their separate ways into manhood. Peter Bogdanovich's direction is episodic and leisurely, naturalistic with just a hint of the maudlin. We get a sense of the North Texas prairie wind blowing through a cattle town where there is not a lot to do and a whole lot of time to do it. Hungry women and a sense of drift. Boredom, gray skies and a lot of dust. You could set "Anarene, Texas" down any place in southwestern or midwestern America, circa 1951, and you wouldn't have to change much: a main drag, a Texaco gas station, a café, a feed store, flat lands all around, old pickup trucks and a pool hall, youngsters with a restless yearning to grow up, drinking beer out of brown bottles giggling and elbowing each other in the ribs, and the old boys playing dominoes and telling tales of bygone days. Robert Surtees's stark, yet romantic black and white cinematography, captures well that bygone era. The wide shot of the bus pulling out, taking Duane off to the Korean War with Sonny watching, standing by the Texaco station with the missing letter in the sign, was a tableau in motion, a moment stopped in our minds. Cybill Shepherd made her debut here as Jacy Farrow, a bored little rich girl playing at love and sexuality. Part of the restorations in the video not shown in theaters in the early seventies includes some footage of her in the buff after stripping on a diving board (!). Jacy is as shallow as she is pretty, and one of the reasons for seeing this film, although in truth Shepherd's performance, while engaging, was a little uneven. The rest of the cast was outstanding, in particular Timothy Bottoms whose Sonny Crawford is warm and forgiving, sweet and innocent. Jeff Bridges's Duane Jackson is two-faced, wild and careless, self-centered and probably going to die in Korea. Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman deservedly won Oscars as best supporting actors. Leachman was especially good as the lonely 40-year-old wife of the football coach who has an awkward affair with the 18-year-old Sonny, while Johnson played a lovable, crusty guy that the kids looked up to. Sam Bottoms played the retarded Billy with steady, tragic good humor. Ellen Burstyn as Jacy's terminally bored mother, and Eileen Brennan as the wise waitress with a hand on her hip were also very good. Memorable, but perhaps too obviously insertional, are the country, pop, and rock and roll tunes from the late forties/early fifties jingling out of car radios and 45 record players throughout the film. Peter Bogdanovich followed this with some hits, including the comedy What's Up Doc (1972) with Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, and Madeline Kahn, and the excellent Paper Moon (1973) with Ryan and Tatum O'Neal, but then tailed off. I don't think he ever lived up to the promise of this film, an American classic not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Raging Hormones in a Small Texas Town
Review: Larry McMurtry is among my favorite contemporary authors and this film is one of the best of those based on his works. Others include Hud (1963), Terms of Endearment (1983), Lonesome Dove (1989), and Texasville (1990). Directed by Peter Bogdanovich and set in fictitious Anarene (Texas) but filmed in Archer City, the focus is primarily on Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges), Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), and Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). When the film begins, there are several separate but related plots which focus primarily on Duane and Jacy as well as on Sonny, a senior at the regional high school who becomes sexually involved with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the love-starved wife of the school's football team coach. Leachman received an Academy Award for her performance in a supporting role as did Ben Jonson for his as "Sam the Lion," owner of the Royal Movie Theater. It is worth noting that the last picture shown in it is Howard Hawks's Red River, a director and film which Bogdanovich's greatly admires.
The acting throughout the cast is outstanding. The film received nine Academy Award nominations and all were deserved. Much as Bogdanovich admires John Ford and Hawks whose western epics are among the finest films ever made, he chose to work on a much smaller, more intimate scale. (Hopefully there will be no attempt to "colorize" The Last Picture Show. As with On the Waterfront, for example, it is inconceivable to me that it would be seen other than in black-and-white.) There are moments in this film when poignancy is almost unbearable. Anarene is dying a slow, relentless death. Many adult residents as well as their sons and daughters express frustration and even despair. Anarene's best qualities are revealed by Jonson's portrayal of "Sam the Lion" but he, like the town, is deteriorating. Because there is more passion (and sometimes lust) than tenderness in most of the personal relationships, his integrity is even more significant. In terms of character, his "Sam the Lion" provides the film's gravitational center. Credit Bogdanovich and McMurtry with collaborating on a brilliant adaptation of McMurtry's novel and Robert Surtees with (as always) stunning, indeed compelling cinematography. Those such as I who have already seen this film several times can easily recount defining moments in so many memorable scenes. We envy those who see The Last Picture Show for the first time.
Those who share my high regard for this film are urged to check out Splendor in the Grass (1961), American Graffiti (1973), Mystic Pizza (1988), for those who are curious to know what happened to several of the lead characters many years later, Texasville (1990), and Fried Green Tomatoes and Rambling Rose (1991).
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