Review of The Last Picture Show (1971) by Bobby B — 11 Feb 2011

I really wanted to love The Last Picture Show, but I have a few too many problems with it. It becomes contrived near the end - it's annoying when films manipulate an ending just to make it happy, but Last Picture Show commits the opposite and equal crime of being depressing for the sake of it.

The movie is downbeat and sad throughout, which comes with the subject matter of a miserable small town, but in the last half has a few too many out-of-left-field tragedies just to make everything bleaker.

At a certain point I started to get annoyed. Nevertheless, in just about every other aspect The Last Picture Show is superb. The characters are so well-developed, and seem so natural. Performances are outstanding all around (and it was interesting to see a younger Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn).

Peter Bogdanovich is such an assured, observant director. Both Last Picture Show and his Paper Moon are fascinating character studies, with a perfect sense of their eras and quietly beautiful black-and-white images.

See both, although I have to say that I prefer the latter.