Not even bad in a good way

Memorable, crazy movie

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This movie is amazing. I will not go over the plot, since many reviewers here has already covered it. I may add that the Sam character is someone who every woman wants and every boy wants to be like. As for me, I would like to have this cowboy for many reasons...but I won't go into that now. I highly recommend this film- a slice of Americana to the bone.Ben Johnson's tour de force performance won him a much deserved Oscar. Z3

The Last Picture Show is a movie with supreme atmosphere. From the salty small town bartender to the guy who brings his own pool cue to the bar to the men placing bets on the outcome of the high school football game. It presents a great snapshot of a '50's town with one main drag and characters who are on a treadmill to nowhere.A majority of the "moral decay" referenced in the film's synopsis deals with people getting naked and particularly with a May-December relationship between a high school boy and his gym teacher's comely wife. The main plot centers on a love triangle between a youthful Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and the lovely Cybill Shepherd, whose beauty is only slightly diminished by the rottenness of her character.The movie definitely has one of the top 5 deflowering scenes I have ever witnessed. It happens on a pool table with close shots of Shepherd lacing her fingers through two leather latticed pool pockets and kneading at them in the manner of a cat.The soundtrack ladles up a ton of Hank Williams, which is really pleasing, and the final 15 minutes feature some outrageously literary moments that are very fun to watch.

Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, this is an excellent, often moving and occasionally depressing coming of age film. Taking place from November 1951 to October 1952, it concerns the bleak, desolate little town of Anarene, Texas which has been slowly dying for years and its inhabitants' sad, unfulfilled lives of wasted potential. What a great feel good film for the Christmas season! The film has an extremely strong script by McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich while Bogdanovich's direction hits all of the right notes. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography of Robert Surtees captures the look and feel of an early 1950s film very effectively but the same could hardly be said of the content as even its milder aspects would have fallen foul of the Hays Code. The film is permeated by a heavy sense of regret. In some respects, it reminded me of "The Third Man" in that its grim setting reflected the damaged lives of its characters. The film is basically an elegy to a dying town.The film stars Timothy Bottoms in a great performance as Sonny Crawford, a high school senior and one of the better adjusted, comparatively speaking, characters. In the beginning, Sonny is listless and is simply going through the motions with his girlfriend of a year Charlene Duggs so he breaks up with her. Like many of the townspeople, he feels as if there is something missing from his life and that he has no reason to live in Anarene other than that he is already there. After his high school coach Coach Popper asks him to drive her to the hospital, he begins an affair with his wife Ruth, played in a wonderful performance by Cloris Leachman. Ruth is severely depressed because of her poor and unsatisfying relationship with her husband - who is hinted to be gay - and finds solace in the arms of the much younger Sonny. As Anarene is a town where everyone knows everyone else and, more to the point, everyone else's business, their affair becomes an open secret but it is left ambiguous whether Coach Popper knows or even cares. After six months, Sonny abandons Ruth for a girl his own age named Jacy Farrow, which leads to Ruth becomes even more depressed. At the end of the film, however, he returns to her. He does so because he is upset and has nowhere else to go but he does seem truly remorseful. Sonny makes some serious mistakes but I do think that he is a good person. In a rather upsetting scene, his friends hire a prostitute for a younger boy named Billy who suffers from intellectual disabilities, ostensibly so he can lose his virginity but really for their own amusement. Sonny initially goes along with the plan, which does not go well. However, he is the only one to take sympathy on Billy afterwards and to apologise as he is very fond and protective of him. Appropriately enough, Billy was played by Bottoms' younger brother Sam.For his ten minute role as the local institution Sam the Lion, Ben Johnson won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and it is easy to see why. In one of the film's best scenes which won him the Oscar, Sam recalls his failed relationship with his one true love in a beautifully written and performed speech which is imbued with loss and regret. He comments that about 80% of marriages are miserable which would be very depressing but, by Anarene standards, he is probably being a little optimistic. Ellen Burstyn gives one of the best performances as Jacy's mother Lois Farrow, a rich but unhappy housewife who has numerous affairs, most notably with her husband's employee Abilene. She deserved the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. As her daughter, Cybill Shepherd is very good. Jacy is an interesting character as she is very manipulative. When a rich boy named Bobby Sheen refuses to have sex with her because she is a virgin, she finally agrees to have sex with her longtime boyfriend Duane Jackson, only to dump him almost immediately afterwards. Things do not go according to plan, however, as Bobby has gotten married in the meantime. Out of sheer boredom, she follows in her mother's footsteps and has sex with Abilene herself but that does not work out either. She then pursues a relationship with Sonny and, after a while, proposes that they get married. While Sonny certainly has feelings for her, he does not love her but nevertheless agrees. However, it turns out after she left a note to her parents telling them of their elopement and the marriage is not even consummated. She apparently only married Sonny for the thrill of disobeying her parents. Even her mother tells Sonny that he was better off with Ruth. Jeff Bridges is very good as Duane but I am surprised that he was likewise nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as I don't think that his performance was on that level. The film also features nice appearances from Clu Glulager as Abilene, Eileen Brennan as the world weary waitress Genevieve and Randy Quaid as the rather creepy rich boy Lester Marlow.Overall, this is an excellent film which explores the sad lives of people in a town that has lost all reason to exist. It was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and deservedly so. One thing that I found very interesting about the numerous sex scenes is that they are all humiliating, either during the event or afterwards. In this sense, the characters' sex lives reflect every other aspect of their lives in Anarene. Towards the end of the film, the cinema shuts down and this marks the end of the town's cultural life. When Sam the Lion died, he took the town with him. It just took a few extra months to die.

A dark tale about man's struggle to find an emotional home for himself, even as life erodes and can cease at any instant.The setting is a wind- and tumbleweed-swept Wichita Falls, TX, in the early Fifties, and we experience this allegory through the peregrinations of high school seniors and the adults who try to influence, manipulate, or just plain control them.Man is portrayed as scarcely more than an animal here -- a creature who prowls, stalks, and ruts, and whose copulations are almost entirely bereft of genuine feeling or depth.At the center of the tale is the aimless local boy Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). When he meets a depressed woman 20 years his senior (Cloris Leachman) who is just as starved for affection, they have intercourse. For a while they find distraction from their despair.The performances in this film are uniformly strong, however, I think too much time is given to the comings and goings of vapid teenagers in heat. I'd have liked to see and learn a little more about the intriguing father figure Joe the Lion (the craggily handsome Ben Johnson). But then again, one of the lessons here is that the good things in life are fleeting. Enjoy -- and more, appreciate -- while you can!I also think there's a take-home message in Sonny. In the course of the film he does manage to grow. Starting out as fickle and unreflective, he evolves into someone who can tolerate the emotional pain of another -- Joe the Lion, and later Mrs. Popper -- without taking the easier route of running away. Definitely a role model for us all!