Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: This movie hangs with you long after you've seen it. Its interlocking tales of love and longing in a small Texas town are as affecting as any I've ever seen. The rich B&W cinematography is first-rate, and the scenes with Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) and the coach's wife (Cloris Leachman) are about as good as movies get. (They both won Academy Awards for their supporting performances.) Timothy Bottoms and Ellen Burstyn are great, too.
Rating:
Summary: TIYL- Film, Malick, McMurtry or S.E. Hinton for that matter
Review: This movie is realy good. I happened to stumble upon it on television and i was not disappointed, but this DVD is definitely a must-have.
Notes: The framing of the shots, the composition of the film, and the sound editing/music (mostly Hank Williams) are all elements that I consider outstanding in regards to this film. Ben Johnson is also excellent in his role.
I hate the phrase coming-of-age, because it is a cliché, but this film fits into that genre I suppose. The landscape of Anarene, TX possesses a desolate sort of beauty usually found in westerns. The plot trudges along, subordinate to the scenic beauty and composition of the film as well as the brilliant depth of characters, not unlike the film Walkabout by Nicholas Roeg or either of Terrance Malick's first two films (Badlands and Days of Heaven, though to a lesser extent). At the center of the picture is Timothy Bottoms, who plays the character Sonny. The film deals with different aspects of isolation and stagnation in its characters as those elements are inherited from the setting. This is true for all the characters - they all deal with this dilemma in different ways, however. One of the highlights of the film is the relationship between Sonny and Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) as it is very well drawn and kindly executed. Cloris Leachman's performance as the coach's lonely wife is also noteworthy.
This is one movie that succeeds because we believe in it. We believe in it because of the way the barren sparseness of the town Anarene is conveyed to us. It encourages us to feel in the most unmanipulative way. This movie's simplicity is its vitality, and vice versa. It is a film not bogged down by melodrama.
On the weak side: Cybil Sheppard. I think cybil shepard is overrated, but in her defense she is presented with a fairly difficult character here. get over your fly baby self. luckily, in this case, age happens
Rating:
Summary: Pure Art
Review: This movie should be hanging on a wall in the Louvre. Set in a small west Texas town in the early 1950's. It concerns nothing important, just how lives intertwine. It won Oscars for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman both in supporting roles. It should have also won for best picture and best direction. This movie gets better with each viewing.
Rating: 
Summary: A plotless mood piece, but very well done
Review: To call a movie plotless sounds negative, but in the case of The Last Picture Show, there's so very little plot that it's barely worth speaking about. The film revolves around a number of characters, most notably two high school seniors. Duane is dating the "only beautiful girl in town" and Sonny is carrying on an affair with a married woman. Several other characters move in and out of view, notably the beauty's mother and the owner of the pool hall. The film carefully develops its dozen or so main characters and simply watches them as they move about the bleak-looking desert town. Further adding to the immersion is the fact that the soundtrack consists solely of early-50's country music heard through tinny radios in the background.This film was quite controversial at the time of its release for its frank (and unglamorised) depictions of sex. Jacy sums up the attitude of sex for the teens when she tells her mother "I would never do that, it's a sin before marriage," but later tells a college boy "I'm a virgin, but I don't want to be." In a small town with little to do, sex is just a form of entertainment, while 1951 morals required that it be hidden from view. This is a film that cares about its characters and allows them to inhabit the setting. The dialogue and events occur naturally, and at the end of the film, the only things that have really happened are Jacy losing her virginity, a funeral, and the high school football team gets some better linebackers. But because you care about the characters (and the performances are universally fantastic), you care about these events that are objectively small, but which are important to the characters. This DVD is not of high quality. This may be deliberate - the film is supposed to have a hard-edged, bleak feel that might not be as effective if the film had been cleaned up for the DVD. There is an hour-long reminiscence on the making of the film, which is interesting to watch once. Director Bogdanovich gets the lion's share of time, but many cast members have their say as well. Overall, it's a decent DVD, but the VHS will contain the important part, which is the film itself, and likely of the same quality.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully nostalgic...yet honest and realistic:
Review: Viewing "The Last Picture Show" is like making a quantum leap to a small southern town in the early 1950s. I don't believe I have seen another movie which evokes such a distinct sense of time and place. Although I was not alive in the 1950s, I have heard relatives discuss what it was like to live in a small southern town in the 1950s, and I am impressed by how much of what I've been told is reflected in this film. For example, the makers of "The Last Picture Show" clearly conveyed the importance of the local movie theater as a place for entertainment at a time when many people did not yet own a television. Also, the music played on radios and record players throughout the movie seems very authentic (with the poorer people listening to Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, and the wealthier people listening to Tony Bennett and Frankie Laine). I don't want to give the impression that "The Last Picture Show" is a two-hour version of "The Andy Griffith Show." These characters seem like real people rather than the romanticized versions of 1950s small-town people we see on TV sitcoms (not that I have anything against Andy and Barney). The characters in "The Last Picture Show" have visible weaknesses as well as strengths. Furthermore, loneliness, aimlessness, and selfishness are the most pervasive topics dealt with in this movie, so don't rent it expecting the feel-good movie of 1971. And yet, in spite of the sobering themes, I have to admit that "The Last Picture Show" does put me in a good mood. It is always a joy to witness convincing dialog, acting, and setting combined in a memorable and thought-provoking story! I strongly recommend "The Last Picture Show."
Rating:
Summary: So great, and then the ending is particularly remarkable.
Review: Watching this for the first time a couple weeks ago, I was surprised first by how many known talents populate the cast. Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson, who won Oscars for their work here, act alongside Ellen Burstyn, Cybil Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Randy Quaid and Jeff Bridges in this coming-of-age tale also focusing on the dead-end lives and passions among the inhabitants of a nearly forgotten town. Anarene, Tex., is not the sort of place I'd want to visit, but the characters who live there are so well-drawn and human that they evoke my sympathy. Sonny, losing and regaining the respect of Sam the Lion, his wise idol and the owner of the town's theater, ambles into adulthood in the most difficult way. He's got a crush on Jacy, his best friend Duane's girl. He's having an affair with his coach's wife Ruth, a lonely woman who finds a roundabout, not-entirely-wise way of falling in love with him. In the process, Sonny becomes desperate, learning about sex, adulthood and life's occasionally less-rewarding aspects. While we watch Sonny, we also watch as Jacy learns from her mother and from the adults around her how to deal with her own sexual longings, despite her initial interest in an innocent, romantic love with Duane. What Jacy does about her sexuality and how it transforms her from a good girl to a mostly manipulative, powerful character is as startling as Sonny's transformation. The final scene, involving Sonny and Ruth, is astounding. Cloris Leachman delivers a powerhouse monologue filled with longing and sorrow, to which Timothy Bottoms responds with a sad, youthful silence. Sonny's adulthood has come too quickly, and it's more than he can handle. The whole thing is heartbreaking. This is a great, great movie. In black-and-white, it's beautiful to see. The well-written story is universal, and the acting is superb.
Rating:
Summary: The Last Picture Show vs Texasville
Review: What excites one about Texasville is that it has been made by essentially the same team as made The Last Picture Show. The surprise then is that almost nobody seems to be aware of the previous film, though, in the case of the performers, they were in it, and though, and most damning, in the case of the director, he made it. Perhaps there is no way to follow up or catch up with these characters. MacMurtry has a better and more honest chance at it because it is only on the page. The first thing one notes is that Texasville is not shot in black and white as The Last Picture Show was. To do so would be a mistake; color was "too pretty" for the original, but these sequel needs to be pretty. Less glum, less oppressed, but therefore less than... The hyper realism of The Last Picture Show is replaced by a not completely light hearted series of set pieces. We're looking at a comedy-romance this second time around. And on its own terms, it might be all right. The problem is the two movies do not present the same the world, not even a world where twenty years have passed. Texasville is full of contrivances, from Junior roping the oil well to the kids starting an egg war. There was no such contrivance in The Last Picture Show. Though both films have wonderful performers, Texasville is marred by its children performers, especially the twins, who are acting cute for the camera, and Jimmy Howell, who plays Duane's son, is fairly awful and impossible to believe as someone that the girls just fall all over ("one in a million"). His heroics contrast sharply with the realistic vision offered by The Last Picture Show in which none of the boys were really heroes; they didn't win football games; they didn't really get all the girls; they were bumbling around. Only one of them still bumbles and only his story suggests the heavy sadness that hangs over the original, and that is Sonny. It's worth noting that Cybil Shepard has not aged well; she looks good, but not when you remember her from The Last Picture Show and Taxi Driver, when she was terribly beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Film
Review: You can read all, and I mean ALL, of the plot in the reviews below, though I don't recommend it. If you haven't seen this film, and are considering it, two things will be helpful to you. First, what are its strengths and weaknesses? Second, what movies are similar? Regarding the former, the cinematography certainly does stand out as fantastic. But more than anything, this movie is about capturing the very realistic "feel" of being in a small Texas town in the 1950s. There is a certain claustrophic and depressing sense that will be familiar to anyone who has lived in a small midwestern or southwestern town and does not feel he or she belongs there, and that feeling creates a sort of life of its own -- a life force that sustains the movie throughout its considerable length. (Also, there is a lot of full frontal nudity of both sexes, which does tend to raise some people's interest.) Back to the film's "feel." The feel sustains the film, and it must, because of its extreme lack of character development and plot. The screenwriter's talents fall far beneath those of the director. The writer was not out to spin a gripping yarn or to develop character like you see in the screen adaptations of Tennessee Williams's plays. Instead, the screenwriter was going straight for the ambience, just like (as another reviewer noted), George Lucas went for the urban feel of that approximate era in American Graffiti. If you want drama, The Last Picture Show will not provide it. You may read some reviewers commenting on the drama provided by the character Cloris (the wife of the protagonist's football coach, with whom our protagonist has an affair). I disagree with those reviewers who think Cloris' character is tragic and adds drama. There are too many characters in this film to identify with or really understand any of them, so it is difficult to empathize unless you invent a false association between yourself and the character. Cloris is in a sad situation, but she is as morally loose and illogical as any in the town. She is a married 40 year old woman who seduces a high school student she doesn't even know (not that it took much seduction -- characters in The Last Picture Show seem to fall into bed with someone every time they trip over their own shoelaces) because, in her words, she "wasn't raised to leave her husband." Oh. Was she raised to cheat on her husband with a boy young enough to be her son? Her simultaneous pain and hypocrisy are believable, and that contributes to the realism of the film and her character. But sympathetic she is not, and if we cannot even sympathize with her, the dramatic potential is limited. Finally, what movies is this one similar to? This is a subjective question, but the closest matches in my mind are movies that try to convey that "feel" of a place that has some dark undertones: (1) Midnight Cowboy, (2) American Graffiti (NOT spelled "Grafitti," by the way), (3) Cinema Paradiso, (4) The Graduate. These are maybe not terribly close matches, because The Last Picture Show is hauntingly unique, but they seem to be in the same neighborhood, if on different blocks. I hope this information helps you decide whether you will like it.
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