Day 19- Movie 19. Texasville (1990)

I wanted to watch Texasville because I actually wanted to talk about a different movie- The Last Picture Show (1971). If you don't know, Texasville is the sequel. The reason I wanted to talk about The Last Picture Show is because it is such a great movie. If you haven't seen it, it is the story of a small Texas town, and the residents living there. It mainly focuses on two high school best friends- Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges, and the girls, women, and mentors that live in their town. The film is beautiful in a number of reasons- it is finely acted, has amazing cinematography, and touches on some powerful themes.

That movie is really about a simpler time in America. It takes place in 1951, and the whole movie really transports you to that time and place. It is a movie about innocence lost, about that time in your life when you are old enough to be confronted with real problems, yet not quite old enough to know exactly how to handle them. That movie is about sex, betrayal, friendship, and forgiveness. It is a movie that makes you think about your own youth, and the mistakes you might have made. It is a film about confronting the endings in your life, while looking ahead to new beginnings. If you haven't seen The Last Picture Show, I recommend checking it out.

Texasville is cool because it comes 19 years after the original (and 30 years later in the lives of the characters), and returns to that same small town, with almost all the original cast members. If The Last Picture Show was about moving from youth to adulthood, Texasville is about looking back over your life in your middle age and wondering how you ended up where you did. This movie isn't as good as the original, but it's still very enjoyable because you get the chance to reconnect with these characters much later in their lives. I loved that part of the film. The part of the film I didn't love was that almost nothing actually happens. You actually feel like you're in a small town, where nothing much ever does take place. The characters move around, talk, but nothing really HAPPENS. Still, I loved the chance to see these characters again, and so I'd give this film a 7/10.

I am interested in what people think about the recent trend of movies coming out after extremely long absences. For example, Tron spanned 28 years between films. Rocky was 16 years, Indiana Jones spanned 19 years, and Rambo did 20 years between installments. I think if they are done with the right reasons, they can be very powerful. Texasville was almost unprecedented at the time, reuniting audiences with characters after such a long period of time. Today it's much more commonplace. I really liked the recent Rocky Balboa and Rambo films, because it was fun to see those iconic characters struggling with different issues at a different point in their lives. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull could have been good if they didn't nuke the fridge and if Harrison Ford had remembered how to act. I wonder if this trend of returning to franchises after long absences will continue?