Director Peter Bogdanovich was initially drawn to THE LAST PICTURE SHOW’s title. When he found out the Larry McMurty novel was actually about the disaffected youth of rural 1950s Texas -- and only tangentially about the last night at a local movie theater -- he lost interest for a time, but eventually returned to the book for the source material of his second film. The content provided a rich environment for a quiet, sad movie of a loss and loneliness, and the title remained an eye-grabber. By all accounts, it was a smart move on Bogdanovich's part.

PICTURE SHOW follows the lives of the key members of the town of Anarene over the course of a single year, though given its insular nature, it sometimes feels like the entire community is on display. Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) finds his love life boring, and after dumping a girlfriend who won't let him touch her for fear of a finger-induced pregnancy, discovers a connection with Mrs. Popper (Cloris Leachman), the wife of the school's gym teacher. The gorgeous Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) is dating Duane (Jeff Bridges), but feels equally stifled, and the love life advice she gets from her mother, played by a terrific Ellen Burstyn, instructs her to sleep around to demystify the allure of sex and stave off a dead marriage that ruins your life. The only thing for people to do other than sleep around in Anarene is go to one of Sam the Lion's (Ben Johnson) establishments: the cafe, the pool hall, or the picture show.

Shot in stark black and white, allegedly to keep the film from looking beautiful and thus nostalgic, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW has a remarkable, consistent tone of loneliness and isolation despite its fixation on sexual practices, and more than its share of naked flesh. Here is a movie consumed with the act of sex, and with plenty of nudity to back it up. Though the movie is now over thirty years old, its frankness seems edgy in the our world of Super Bowl nipple hysteria. The FCC would probably debate giving this film an NC-17 today.

Yet despite its pervasive gloom, PICTURE SHOW is not depressing or dreary as many movies with these themes are. Perhaps that is because of the outstanding performances by the cast; Leachman and Johnson won Oscars, and the young trio of Bottoms, Bridges, and Shepherd imbue their roles with such a sense of reality that the film borders on becoming a documentary. Perhaps its because anyone who grew up in a suburb can relate to the story while simultaneously feeling gratified that their own home town was better than Anarene.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW was the best and worst thing that could happen to Bogdanovich. He'd already directed one picture; 1968's TARGETS, which was buried because of its scary content in the wake up the Kennedy and King assassinations. If he expected much of a career in Hollywood, he'd need a hit, and he got one with THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. But if there is such a thing as a movie being too big, too successful, PICTURE SHOW was it. Audiences loved it, and critics raved. Newsweek famously proclaimed it the most important film by a young American director since CITIZEN KANE. Here's where the trouble started. Suddenly, Bogdanovich was hailed as a genius and after a couple more big hits (1972's WHAT'S UP DOC? and 1973's PAPER MOON), he began to believe his own hype. On a brief but revealing DVD extra, Bogdanovich talks about PICTURE SHOW in 1973, at the height of his power. He couldn't possibly come off more arrogantly. Believing he could do no wrong, Bogdanovich quickly did. His career never fully recovered; after a string of flops (and some devastating personal tragedies) he's today reduced to directing TV movies about Pete Rose for ESPN.

He became victim to his own success and hype, ironically just hs his mentor and idol Orson Welles had after KANE. It is frequently said that with time, it became clear that Welles in KANE wasn't just playing William Randolph Hearst, he was also playing a version of his future self. In hindsight, Bogdanovich came to resemble his Sonny from THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, trapped in a town in which he was an outsider. PICTURE SHOW's title should be ironic since Bogdanovich was only on his second film. Instead, it's oddly fitting.

IF YOU LIKED THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, CHECK OUT: TARGETS (1968), a great forgotten movie, about a nice guy who snaps and goes on a disturbing killing spree. Boris Karloff costars as an aging film star who crosses his path.

THE BAD

The trailer to the 1980 roller disco musical proclaimed, "XANADU! Where time stops and the magic never ends!" The statement's close to the truth; XANADU is so painfully slow and creakily constructed, it can feel that time has stopped, leaving you stuck watching the "magic" of its ceaseless dreck for all eternity.

Its story takes off when two men meet. A floundering artist named Sonny (Michael Beck), works in the record industry painting large replicas of album covers for promotional purposes while he struggles to decide what he really wants to do in life. Though he claims grand artistic designs, he is devoid of ideas, and free of any talent besides aping the style of others. How, exactly, this qualifies him as an "artist" is left vague.

Sonny crosses paths with Danny, whose problems are even worse. Once he toured the world with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, making a living creating music and seeing the world. If that wasn't bad enough now he's a fabulously real estate magnate wealthy, living in a gorgeous mansion, and he is forced to spend all day at the beach playing clarinet. How, exactly, one could deem this life in any way bad is left vague.

Danny, in short, is a spoiled whiner. He meets Sonny by chance, and reveals his lifelong dream: to open a jazz club like the ones he used to play in back in the 1940s. The duo's schemes are spurred on by a mysterious roller-skating beauty named Kira (Olivia Newton-John), who has magical powers of teleportation and stuff. After a “magical” eternity, it is revealed (and if you legitimately care about XANADU spoilers, here's your warning to skip to the end of the review) that Kira is a muse, sent by the Greek god Zeus to inspire Sonny. How exactly, the opening of a roller disco nightclub qualifies as a grand artistic statement worthy of the inspiration of a mystic muse is also left vague.

Kira and Sonny fall in love, but that is against the laws of the tribal council, or the Greek gods or something. Kira explains her situation to Sonny and is infuriated when he will not believe that she is an ageless immortal being from beyond time and space. Jeez, Sonny she roller blades around, disappears in a wink of an eye, and, most incredibly, willfully makes out with you. That should have been the first giveaway! We learn that Kira has inspired Shakespeare's sonnets, Beethoven's music and Michaelangelo's paintings and, now, Sonny's nightclub. One of these sings is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

There's nothing wrong with making a movie about the supernatural or a muse (Albert Brooks did it a few years ago). But a muse from a Greek pantheon illuminated solely by boogelicious neon? A muse who falls in love with a waffling slacker forgery artist instead of the greatest artists in the history of modern men? ("Sure Michaelangelo was talented, but Sonny's got really cool hair!") It doesn't work, and neither does the extremely literal deus ex machina of the ending.

The single bright spot in this otherwise uniformly terrible mess -- and I haven't even approached the subject of the terrible music provided by John Farrar and Electric Light Orchestra -- is the soothing performance of Kelly as Danny. Nearly 70 when he was cast, Kelly nevertheless provides the single musical number of interest, a simple but charming dance with Newton-John. The years may have eroded Kelly's physical talent, but they couldn't touch his grace or his incredible smile. Even when surrounded by roller disco stupidity, he provides the picture with a legitimate sense of nostalgia and warmth.

Several years later, Newton-John would implore the entire world to "get physical." In XANADU, she was just forcing them to get physically ill.

INSTEAD OF XANADU, CHECK OUT: CITIZEN KANE (1941), where Orson Welles’ title character lives in an enormous palace he names Xanadu. CITIZEN KANE and XANADU are the movie versions of matter and antimatter.

THE UGLY

The two greatest idols of my childhood were Spider-Man and Hulk Hogan. So when Hogan made a brief comeback to the WWE (or WWF as I always knew it) back in 2002 I was delighted that his return was commemorated by a stellar DVD called HULK STILL RULES, complete with an hour-long "documentary" on the Hulkster plus a whole disc and a half of class Hulk matches. As much as I loved -- and continue to love, in a strange way -- Hulk Hogan, I can't help find this disc rather, well, ugly.

There's nothing wrong with the wrestling, and besides, Poop Shoot's Scott Bowden does a much better job talking about that than I ever could anyway. No what I find so captivatingly strange is the Hogan character himself. In ways that my eight-year-old self was utterly oblivious to, the Hulkster is sort of a freak.

What, for instance, is with the incessant references to getting "turned on?" And what, for further instance, is with all the pelvic thrusts? Hulk this is family entertainment! Keep your steroid-addled groin out of it! Listen to this incredible rant from one WWF talk show appearance:

"Man you know Vicious Vince, that turns me on brother! That turns me on man! I can't stand -- I can't stand to see another guy go down like that without ripping my clothes off!"

You can't WHAT?!? HULK NO! Somehow none of these rather blatant references made their way through my childhood filter, but can you imagine? A meaty, balding man, ripping his shirts to pieces demanding that his fans get off, get turned on with him while guys “go down like that?” That's illegal in many states!

In a strange contrast, Hogan is also deeply obsessed with religious imagery. I admire his spiritual side, but question his unending self-comparisons to religious icons and imagery. On the HULK STILL RULES you can actually chart the development of his narcissistic deployment of these crazy metaphors. It starts with "going to the mountaintop" then escalates to being "more than mortal," and then finally, to comparisons with ancient Biblical prophets. Hulk always included "saying your prayers" are part of Hulkamania's three "demandments" but it only later became clear that Hulkster was demanding you pray to him instead of a more traditional deity. The funniest example of this excess comes in the interview before a tag-team match that pitted Hulk and Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake against "Macho Man” Randy Savage and Zeus (who, coincidentally, plays Hulk's opponent in the ugly movie masterpiece NO HOLDS BARRED). As Hulk and The Barber get the fans amped up for the match, interviewer Gene Okerlund prompts this mind-boggling speech from the Hulkster:

"You know something Mean Gene? Ever since me and the Barber hooked up, we've been hanging and banging, and we also been riding our Harley Davidsons through a lot of heavy traffic, dude. But on the way to the Meadowlands today, when we hit the George Washington Bridge, it was at a standstill! So me and The Barber, we just looked at each other, brother, and we decided to head for the water, brother. We headed for the Henry Hudson River! And just like Moses, parted the Red Sea, that's exactly what happened when the pythons started heading for the river."

So wait. You're riding your motorcycle, there's traffic, you're on a bridge. And suddenly you're Moses (who, as I understand it, preferred sandals to motorcycles as a mode of transportation), you're parting the Henry Hudson River and your arms are involved somehow (his "pythons" were always Hogan's slightly phallic nicknames for his arms). Hogan should have gone further and told us how, like Moses, he freed thousands of Jews from the tyranny of the fiendish Macho Pharoah with a cry of "Macho Dude! Let my little Hulkamaniacs go, brother!"

(In a neat bit of parallel religious iconography, the announcer of the wrestling match concludes his commentary with an air of authority, "There is a power stronger than Zeus, and it's called Hulkamania!" Granted, the opponent in the match is named Zeus, but it's almost as if Hogan has a systematic agenda of deification!)

What appealed to me as a child was Hogan's super-heroic nature; where every other wrestler was felled by a Perfectplex or a Million Dollar Dream, Hogan was always able to come back with a burst of strength and win the day. Beyond his strange dual obsessions with icky flesh imagery and bizarre Judeo-Christian symbolism, what alarms me every time I watch HULK STILL RULES is how willing he is to cheat. He uses weapons against his opponents! He strangles them with his headband! He beats women! And the crowd -- and, presumably, Lil' Matt Singer -- ate it up with a red-and-yellow spoon! The subtext that's just barely below the surface (or, frequently, blatantly above the surface) is what makes HULK STILL RULES so much fun to watch.

IF YOU LIKED HULK STILL RULES, CHECK OUT: The Hulkster in SANTA WITH MUSCLES (1996). On second thought? Don’t.