The Last Picture Show
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 22, 1971 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
93
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TimeStefan Kanfer
Director Bogdanovich has achieved a tactile sense of time and place. More, he has performed that most difficult of all cinematic feats: he has made ennui fascinating. Together, that is enough to herald him as possibly the most exciting new director in America today. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
It's meant to make you feel sad for what's lost, but a vitality throbs through it. Read full review
100
Total FilmPhilip Kemp
A worthy tribute to Bogdanovich's idols, Orson Welles and John Ford. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Using period songs and decor to create nostalgia is familiar enough, but to tunnel down to the visual level and get that right, too, and in a way that will affect audiences even if they aren't aware how, is one hell of a directing accomplishment. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 ode to a Texan small town is still a masterpiece whichever way you look at it. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineBudd Wilkins
Delineates the quiet, desperate lives of the citizens of Anarene, Texas over the course of one year in the early 1950s. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim Robey
Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Oscars, but the work of Eileen Brennan and Timothy Bottoms is even more cherishable. Read full review
100
Time OutTom Huddleston
The scene where Sam imparts his wisdom to young buck Bottoms may be the saddest, loveliest moment in 1970s American cinema. And that’s saying something. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Bogdanovich's finest effort; bleak and beguiling. Read full review
90
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Peter Bogdanovich's fine second film, The Last Picture Show, adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel by McMurtry and Bogdanovich, has the effect of a lovely, leisurely, horizontal pan-shot across the life of Anarene, Tex., a small, shabby town on a plain so flat that to raise the eye even 10 degrees would be to see only an endless sky. Read full review
90
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Notre Dame professor Edward Fischer has said that the best films, like the best books, tell how it is to be human under certain circumstances. Larry McMurtry did a beautiful job of this in his small novel (which he transferred to the screen), The Last Picture Show. Read full review
88
Rolling StoneTim Grierson
It's a snapshot of a small Texas town in the 1950s that's ostensibly filled with bighearted, god-fearing real Americans. But this exceedingly sad film spits in the eye of such homespun niceties: This is an Eisenhower-era world riddled with directionless teens, bored housewives and disenfranchised citizens who can't escape the futility around them. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
Bogdanovich’s perfect recreation of the sense of time and place, and his ability to mix wit with poignancy that make this such a charming, timeless film. Read full review
75
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
It's an intimate psychological story laced with references to Hollywood movies. Read full review
70
The New YorkerPauline Kael
It’s plain and uncondescending in its re-creation of what it means to be a high-school athlete, of what a country dance hall is like, of the necking in cars and movie houses, and of the desolation that follows high-school graduation. Read full review
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