Rating: 
Summary: Everybody's Talkin about 'Cowboy
Review: Lets get the facts straight, this movie is hot. Also, the lead theme song of this movie has soon become synonymous with this oscar award winning movie starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Rent it and find out for yourself how great this x -rated film is. Don't worry, it is now only rated R because the times have changed! Rent it and watch it!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie
Review: The Amazon review for this movie is right on the dot. I do think that this movie is still more daring than 90% of the films you'll see today. Jon Voigt is fantastic as a naive small-town hustler who traps himself in a big city. A big reason to see this movie is for the shots of bohemian 42nd street before Guiliani's henchmen moved in and "disneyfied" it...
Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Movie That Holds the Test of Time
Review: There are few movies that grip you like Midnight Cowboy. A movie that holds the test of time, and shows that friendship survives in the deepest of tragedies. Dustin Hoffman, and Jon Voight give the performances of their career. Hoffman as a sleazy con man, and Voight as the young stud in New York. You really get a first hand look at what New York could turn out to be if you do not succede at your chosen profession. I believe this is the greatest movie ever made and you have to see it and not back away from it like people have been doing since it has been released END
Rating: 
Summary: A STORY ABOUT THE TRUE FRIENDSHIP.
Review: "Midnight Cowboy" is not easy to see. Even though it has lost a good deal of its original impact, this movie has visually striking scenes and powerful images. But underneath that though surface, "Midnight Cowboy" is a story about the unconditional friendship.Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight) and "Razzo" Rizzo (played by Dustin Hoffman) are apparently the two more different persons in the whole New York City, but actually they share more in common than they and the audience think at the beginning of the film. Despite the fact that their origins are completely different, Joe and Razzo eventually understand that they only have each other in the tough Big City. The song "Everybody Is Talking" is very good, and it is a great musical background to the gray streets of New York City. The director John Schlesinger never was known for finesse and subtlety, and this movie proves that he was a risky director. Jon Voight became well-known thanks to his portrayal of Joe Buck, and Dustin Hoffman portrayed a lovable loser with his usual skills. "Midnight Cowboy" is a very dark film, but intelligent and influential at the same time. Perhaps some elements have lost their original impact, but still this is a powerful movie.
Rating:
Summary: Classic film about loneliness and friendship......
Review: Until "American Beauty," this was the last "dark" film to win the Best Picture Oscar. Somber, penetrating, and full of desperate characters, this film, despite some dated qualities (the Andy Warhol-inspired party is a glaring example), is really an old-fashioned tale about the American Dream. Voight and Hoffman portray two losers in New York City who live on the edge of despair, hustling, stealing, and living in a condemned building with little food and no heat. Hoffman, as Ratso, dreams of going to Florida; his fantasies (literally played out in his head) include throwing off the limitations of his illness (which has left him crippled) and becoming a much-admired sex symbol on the beaches of Miami. The sequences are heartbreaking (because we know they will never be realized) and serve as a stark reminder of how delusions keep us from descending into total madness. While the friendship is the dramatic center of the film, there are also many supporting characters (pathetic individuals, all) and pointed shots at the callousness of the American landscape to enhance the central theme. This was John Schlesinger's last great film (he's been reduced to tripe like "Eye for an Eye" in recent years) and a perfect way to round out the decade of the 1960s. While it might seem tame by today's standards (it was rated X back in 1969), its essential power remains.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: Most likely being one of the best films ever made, "Midnight Cowboy" is an incredibly original and savagely honest film that takes a look at the big dreams people hold for themselves, and the cold, brutal realities behind them. The performances given by the two lead actors, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman are absolutely brilliant. Voight`s character, Joe Buck, is a young and naive Texas man who flees to New York City, dreaming of becoming a big-shot huslter. Hoffman plays an ailing and sleazy con-man name Ratso Rizzo, who meets Joe along the way. Together, the two slowly witness their lives falling apart, as the brutal urban jungle robs them of food, money, diginity and ultimately hope. The film`s depiction of the street life in the sixties is accurate, and we watch the two drifters`s struggle for survival, and wandering around the seedy undergrounds of the city. But what Joe and Ratso realise is that what they really need is each other, and the two lean on each for support. Sadly enough, by the time they reach their dream destination, it is too late. The ending of the film is heart-shattering, and it will leave you crushed and emotionally-drained. A truly powerful, exceptional and haunting treasure.
Rating:
Summary: Pure evil on film
Review: This film is interesting only as a reflection of the degradation
and evil of the hollywood liberals at the peak of their powers.
This cesspool was given an academy award in 1969 and its a
distillation of all the ideas in the liberal's campaign to
destroy America.
The message of this film to those who saw it was: be a bum,
take drugs, engage in anonmyous unsafe sex and
above all don't work. And that its the obligation of the
rest of society to assist you in pursuit of your lifestyle with
cash payments, free housing and free medical care.
The heros of the film are two deadbeats who parasite off the
rest of society. The first one starts out as an ordinary
American from the heartland who inexplicably quits his job
and decides to become a prostitute in New York. The other
one is a human rat whose moral decay has become physical, lives
off garbage and lives in the spaces where normal people will
not go.
In his assault on American values, the director takes the
familiar image of the cowboy in american life and pushes
the transformational propoganda idea in the film that rather
than being a strong male image, its a fetish image for lowlifes.
The cowboy in the film hangs out like a bum, runs out of money
and then moves in with the kindly human rat. The idea of going
back to work never enters his mind as his money is running out
nor does leaving the city. The film also does an excellent
job in creating a propoganda world-view that the "bad people"
are the new yorkers working and doing things rather than these
bums.
They set up housekeeping together in abandoned building and
drift into a life of petty crime together. The human rat
encourages the other guy to believe his delusions about being
a male prostitute. The human rat dreams that the solution to
all his problems will be in Florida.
The centerpiece of the film is a 1960's style drug party where
inexpicably these two bums are invited. As would be expected,
the drugged out liberal hippies end up being the path to success
for the bums. The hippie women are apparently more than willing
to pay for sex with street bums. That makes more sense than
it might seem because their hippie men are probably so messed
up from their drugs as not to be an option.
But then it all goes wrong. The human rat reaches the end of
the line. Its as if the very possiblity of success triggers
off a new round of moral and physical decay. To save him,
we get more petty crime which leads to a bus trip to florida.
They get him to Florida, but its too late.
This is an all-out message film and the message is that work
is wrong, being a bum is noble, your problems are not your
own fault ever, drugs are the solution to everything,
that the life of a street prostitute is an exciting adventure
full of colorful characters and that its all those ordinary
working people in the city that look you funny who are hateful
and messed up. And that (finally) being a bum isn't a problem,
its living in New York thats the problem. Florida sunshine
will make everything better.
This film inaguarated the golden age of street trash, porn,
hookers and drugs in American Culture which lasted almost
ten years. Ten years of heroic pimps, hip druggies and
glamorizing the lives of streetwalkers while the downtowns
of american cities took the New York of this film as their
model for urban development (porn districts and open-air drug
markets).
Nobody will ever know how many lives this idiotic glamorization
of the gutter cost. But in the end, the intent of these people
was so evil that the world they were trying to create destroyed
itself before it could destroy all america.
The happy street-people of the 1970's leading their happy street
life got older and less appealing. And when Ronald Reagan was
elected, they were transformed from happy street people into
the suffering homeless. The liberals took the human wreckage
that their ideology of street life and drugs had created and
then demanded that the government solve the problem by giving
out money. But by that time, drugs and disease had already
claimed most of the liberals who bought into this film's vision.
And those that remained were too few and too discredited to
convince anyone of anything.
Its interesting only as an example of the depths of liberal
propoganda and what the message of the liberals to the country
was. They started in the 1950s with anti-america films, then
moved on to anti-god and anti-marriage films, then drug films
and then reached the end of the line with Midnight Cowboy
where the very notion of working itself is dismissed as
irrelivant. It was a careful plan designed to lead americans
down a road of degenerative thought. It was successful for
a while, but in the end it was defeated.
Rating:
Summary: Avant-garde in 1969, but has aged rather harshly
Review: This movie is regarded as groundbreaking for its time and I can only imagine this is because it captured a very American zeitgeist and challenged conventions. But only 35 years later we live in a very different age. The homosexuality, poverty, desperation and hedonism that was so repressed prior to the 70s is now center stage in the public sphere. Nothing's shocking in this film, not from the POV of today. It's strange how time and culture truly marches on.
What is left is just a solid character drama with two superb actors in a time capsule. Voigt and Hoffman really are excellent actors. But ultimately the story failed to really touch me in the here and now. If you want to see a movie depicting two victims of society discovering intimacy, then I would suggest Kiss of the Spider Woman, which I found to be much more moving and still relevent.
A great movie from a film history (and American history) perspective, but if you are looking for gripping, contemporary entertainment--I think this film may leave you cold. Still, it is a classic and anyone interested in their film literacy should make a point of seeing it.
Rating: 
Summary: what is all the fuss?
Review: You can almost bet on one of two things about movies with alot of controversy, it will be a bad movie that everyone will end up seeing or a great movie that nobody sees. This is the first one. I have heard for years "it's the only X rated movie to win best picture!" Despite some of the other reviews I've read I did not think this movie was good. I didn't care about the movie being X (although later changed to R) I just wanted to see a good movie, especially after hearing about it all this time. I was very disapointed. It was long and boring. I love all types of film, so I'm not being judgemental about it being a drama. The acting perfomances really are great, but that is about it. I did not like the directing style. Some of the other reviews say, "It hasn't dated at all". That's so far from the truth, don't be fooled by that. The movie is VERY dated looking. I'm 26 years old so I just might not get it but I don't see anything "modern" about this movie. Like I said good acting, even though Dustin Hoffman does almost the same shtick years later in Rain Man. When I got done I was glad it was finaly over. 20 minutes into the movie I was starting to get that "come on lets get this over with feeling". Plus they play that horrible "Everybody's Talking" song about 900 times through the course of the movie. Yeah that never gets old. The movie is basicly, Jon Voight wants to be a "hustler" to take money from rich women for sex, but he gets hustled. He then repeatedly gets taken advantage of by EVERYBODY. He befriends a really sleazy Dustin Hoffman and the homosexual overtones run rampent for these two. I don't know if the were supposed to come across gay at the time, but it sure comes across that way now. If that wasn't what the director was going for then he made the wrong movie. It's just amazing to me that this movie won best picture. I could not see any reason it should have won best picture. But I also can't see any reason Gladiator won best picture as well. In closing, don't believe the hype, the movie is not even close to as good as some claim it to be.
Rating:
Summary: Schlesinger's Ode to The Sixties
Review: "The Midnight Cowboy" represented another daring film from Britain's John Schlesinger, whose sociological grasp as a filmmaker enabled him to present the definitive odes to the sixties in both his native England and in the America where he spent so much time and ultimately settled.
"The Midnight Cowboy" arrived in theaters in 1969, as the turbulent sixties were ending, while two years later his daring "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" presented a hard-hitting look at his native country. The earlier film featured two dynamic young stars on the rise. Dustin Hoffman had hit it big two years earlier in "The Graduate" while "Midnight Cowboy" marked the major film starring debut of Jon Voight.
Voight and Hoffman make a perfect team, their varying types of energy and styles feeding off of each other in a drama in the way that Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon played off one another brilliantly in the comedy "The Odd Couple." Voight plays a small town Texan who arrives in New York City determined to become a big time gigolo. His first effort ends hilariously with Sylvia Miles, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for one highly memorable scene, bursting into tears after he has sex with her in her Park Avenue apartment and announces his intention of collecting money. She calls herself a "sexy looking chick" and, in her tearful resentment over being asked to pay Voight, finally extracts $20 from the down at the heels Texan before he leaves.
Voight meets the tubercular Hoffman in a sleazy bar. Hoffman is a real hustler, the New York kind who is street smart in contrast to the naïve country boy Voight. Hoffman promises to represent Voight in his sex activities. He entices some money from Voight and in turn provides the address of John McGiver, someone Hoffman asserts can help the Texan's career. His lone meeting with McGiver in the latter's dingy apartment reveals a badly deranged men who is hooked on religion and shouts the name of God repeatedly while an angry neighbor hollers "Shut up!" Voight makes a swift retreat.
A furious Voight sees Hoffman again, demanding his money back. Hoffman pleads poverty but invites Voight to share his small apartment with him. The little food they have to share freezes over in the bitter winter cold since the apartment is devoid of heating.
Daring homosexual filmmaker Schlesinger makes some points about gay sex in the sixties. In one scene Voight has sex with a frightened young man in a theater. In another such encounter he is determined to obtain enough money to purchase bus tickets for himself and Hoffman so that his ill friend can realize his ambition of moving to Florida. His determined anxiety prompts him to beat the helpless man as he escapes from his apartment after removing money from his wallet.
"The Midnight Cowboy" copped Oscars in three major categories, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writer, the last award going to former blacklisted scenarist Waldo Salt, who adapted James Leo Herlihy's novel to the screen.
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