The Last Picture Show

10/29/2018

***Bleak, trashy B&W drama of life in a fading Texas town in the early 50s with several strong points*** Released in 1971, “The Last Picture Show” is a B&W drama of several teens and adults in a dying Texas town on the windy plains in 1951. Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd play the main high shoolers while Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn appear as the adults. Randy Quaid and Clu Gulager have peripheral roles. Sam the Lion (Johnson) is the minor mogul of the town, the father figure of several of the boys, who are fatherless in practice, if not reality. Despite wallowing in a dreary pall (which ties-in to the theme), the movie conveys many insights about real life and has some genuine warmth. A couple good examples are when Sam looks at Sonny (Timothy B

2/13/2021

I must have watched this movie a few years after it came out, but I had no specific memory of it, no feeling of deja vu of having seen a scene before. It is a good film in many ways, certainly achieving its apparent goal of portraying a bleak landscape of a dying town. The dialogue, which I notice since I write novels that feature a lot of dialogue, is excellent, just what you expect from Larry McMurtry. The acting is solid, though a little dreamy and perhaps overdone in places. I like how the camera focuses on faces at times even when nothing is being said. Because there are so many young men and women characters, there is a lot of sex and obsession about sex. That is the intended audience, I imagine, the young and young at heart. I liked the imagery I saw in the life blood of a

1/9/2025

"Sonny" (Timothy Bottoms) and "Duane" (Jeff Bridges) are best pals in a remote Texan town that offers them little by way of prospects. They both vie for the love interest of "Jacy" (Cybill Shepherd) although she is supposed to be dating "Duane". She comes from the family that passes for wealth in "Anarene" and her mother (Ellen Burstyn) has essentially told her to keep her options open and see which, from an extremely limited gene pool, might offer her the best prospects. For most of their lives, "Sam" (Ben Johnson), himself a symbol of a bygone era, was a sort of father figure and his death leaves them in charge of the town's entertainment - a dilapidated bar/pool hall/cinema that's just about as run down as the town itself. Do they stay and run it together? Will one or both decide that t