Best and Worst Movies About Texans/Texas (Austin, El Paso: motel, university)

[hooky hornstein]

Speaking of old black and white movies filmed in Texas in the '60s, ever see Target...Austin, Texas about Austin's nuclear holocaust response system?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCQePqXEwwA

[tomchard]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Not a movie, but the miniseries "Texas Rising" was so painful to watch that my husband and I turned it off after about 45 minutes. The accents, the stupid topography, the over the top artsiness of it, and most of all - the ridiculous script! Ugh, it was probably the worst movie/series supposedly about Texas that I've ever seen.

Texas Rising (TV Mini-Series 2015) - IMDb

... AGREE with KathrynAragon on this one! ... It stunk!
We quit watching it, after trying to understand what they were doing amongst all those cliffs & buttes, and the "action" never seemed to come to anything for that episode.
We tried to watch it a few nights later, and it appeared to never have gotten past the preparation for the battle at Goliad. ... We finally gave up ...
...

[hound 109]

My Top Dozen Texas Movies are:

12. Tender Mercies - Duval was amazing & so was Tess Harper. A classy & sweet movie.
11. Wild Bunch - Haven't seen this one mentioned yet. Wow...what a cast (Earnest Borgnine, William Holden, Warren Oates, Robert Ryan, Ben Johnson & Strother Martin). This one is historical, violent with great acting & is one of Peckinpah's best films
10. Friday Night Lights - a good movie with great characters & is highly entertaining. It nails an important component of Texas culture.
9. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - With Tommy Lee, (& imo is better than No Country for Old Men). Great scenery & a great story. Tommy Lee and Barry Pepper were fantastic in this.
8. The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom - Where Fargo meets the fascinating world of Texas High School Cheerleaders. Holly Hunter's performance is jaw dropping. The movie nails Suburban Oil Patch Houston in the early 80s (& probably now ). Swoozy Kurtz & Beau Bridges were fabulous & Hunter deserved an oscar. A must see movie.
7. Selena - Great music, fascinating story, celebrates Texas culture (& the 35% of Texans who are Hispanic). Great performance by J-Lo before she was a superstar & the always solid Edward James Olmos. I liked Selena the artist, Selena the movie...and I like the idea of (celebrating) Selena.
6. Dazed & Confused - Goodness, Did they nail the mid 70s. This one has it all; stoners, jocks, road tunes, hip huggers, muscle cars, pickups,.. I swear Linklater was following me & my friends around (& taking notes) back in HS in 1975. Fun music, great acting (by a bunch of future Oscar winners). Yes, (all you youngsters from the past 3 decades), the mid 1970s were really like that (except for maybe the student on student paddling ....that came later in college fraternities, in HS paddling was handled by Coaches and Assistant Principals ).
5. Terms of Endearment - Great story & writing (McMurtry), Great acting (MacLaine, Winger, Nicholson, Daniels) set in Houston (for the most part). Tear jerker. Shirley and Jack at their best. Great movie.
4. Lone Star - Good to see others (up thread) recommending this. Fascinating story set in a fictional town (that is obviously Del Rio). Chris Cooper's break out role. It celebrates (& shows the dark side) of all that is South Texas. Great acting by over a dozen great actors, this is a great small town story with 4-5 different storylines (the wealthy, the illegal alien, the quiet & nice lawman, the overworked teacher, the by the book military officer (& of course a couple of villains). It's a murder mystery, a romantic tragedy, & has a hell of an ending. Lone Star nails the ethnic challenges & at the same time celebrates all things that are Texas. You'll think about this movie for months afterwards.
3. Apollo 13 - I'm a NASA geek and this was the best movie that celebrates the 60s & 70s space program. Hanks and Ron Howard are also NASA geeks and this movie (along with their fantastic miniseries From the Earth to the Moon) celebrates this. Also, this is just a great story, with great acting from Hanks, Bacon, Ed Harris, Gary Senise & Kathleen Quinlan. Jim Lovell & all of the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury Astronauts were bad @ss freaking studs ("failure is not an option"). This movie (along with The Right Stuff) should be required viewing (it should be watched daily) for ALL Republican and ALL Democratic party members & ALL of their wussy and ineffectual leaders (Leaders from both parties for the past 15 years)....to see how real men get things done.
2. The Last Picture Show - Before there were large swaths of Suburban areas in Texas (like there have been for the past 35 years)....there were only (a handful of) cities, a few dozen big towns & thousands of small towns. Set in the early 50s (before my time), this movie IS small town Texas. It's got it all. The wonderful "Flo" type waitress in the diner (played by the fantastic Eileen Brennan), the tobacco chewing redneck football coach, the wind & dust of north central texas (NW of Ft. Worth), the handsome roustabout with money in his pocket (perfectly played by Clu Galagher), the future handsome roustabout (& current HS football star) played by Jeff Bridges who nails it. The rich Oil parents (& their breathtakingly beautiful daughter) Ellen Burstyn deserved an Oscar as the rich texas (former beauty queen) semi-debutante mom & Cybill Shepard was perfect as the prettiest girl in town. A sweet & sad romance between the nice/quiet kid and nice quiet married woman (Cloris Leachman & Tim Bottoms). And then there was Sam the Lion, one of the greatest characters ever....and perfectly played by Ben Johnson (what a stud). Written by McMurtry (based in part by his home town) and directed by Bogdanovich (who infuriated every male Texan between the ages of 13 & 33 by romancing Cybill away from the rest of us). Bogdanovich filmed this movie in B&W (on purpose & it works). I love the many small cameo roles (including a young Randy Quaid) but roles mostly played by small town, regular Texans who toss out those typical (& wonderful) throwaway townsfolk comments that can still be heard in hundreds of small towns across Texas today. This is a practically perfect movie.
1. Lonesome Dove - Yeah, I know it's a Mini-Series. But it's the best mini-series of all time...and it's the best movie set in (or about) Texas ever. I'm not the only person who has watched all 6 1/2 hours of this epic film multiple times. The story (by McMurtry), the scenery, the history, the larger than life acting are all first rate. Robert Duval, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, the beautiful Diane Lane, Angelica Huston all in the best roles of their careers. Other great performances by the fabulous Chris Cooper (as July Johnson), Frederic Forrest (as the evil Blue Duck), DB Cooper, Barry Corbin, the wonderful Steve Busceme & Glen Headly. Even Ricky Schroeder and Robert Ulrich (in their best roles) were great. The characters are real, the history unflinching (& possibly politically incorrect). This film shows a time when life (& people) were tougher & there was a clear line between good or bad & there were consequences (if caught) for being bad. Gus (Robert Duval) & Woodrow (Tommy Lee) are characters that will live for ever. They were (for the most part) good, heroic, & they would rarely tolerate rude behavior in a man. ....be it a lippy barkeep, a bullying Army Sargent, a "man burner", a horse thief or someone being rude (or violent) to a woman. Watching Lonesome Dove is a wonderful & short 6.5 hours spent.... and it's the best movie about Texas ever.
.

[gguerra]

There is a great documentary about the movie Giant on PBS. I recommend it highly
Here is the link
Video: Children of Giant - Full Episode | Watch VOCES Online | PBS Video

[radiolibre99]

There's a great documentary by the BBC about Texas. It was narrated by Virginia comedian Rich Hall.

Look it up on youtube. It hit home pretty hard.

[hooky hornstein]

Originally Posted by radiolibre99

There's a great documentary by the BBC about Texas. It was narrated by Virginia comedian Rich Hall.

Look it up on youtube. It hit home pretty hard.

Thank you for the suggestion, radiolibre99. I just watched it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it at the beginning but quickly grew tired of Rich Hall's snarkiness. If the show had been condensed to 25 minutes long, I might've loved it but after an hour and 29 minutes, I was about ready to hurl.

I can't decide whether it hit home or not. Sure everything in it was true and nothing was slanderous, per se, but so much of it was attributed so liberally. Texas this and Texas that. Obviously there have been people who fit whichever one of the three dozen or so stereotype characteristics he mentioned and I even know people who fun-lovingly play up the Texas stereotype but so many of the stereotypes don't fit anybody (or many people) anywhere in Texas.

Do you think they do?

But yeah... it was entertaining.

[radiolibre99]

Originally Posted by hooky hornstein

Thank you for the suggestion, radiolibre99. I just watched it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it at the beginning but quickly grew tired of Rich Hall's snarkiness. If the show had been condensed to 25 minutes long, I might've loved it but after an hour and 29 minutes, I was about ready to hurl.

I can't decide whether it hit home or not. Sure everything in it was true and nothing was slanderous, per se, but so much of it was attributed so liberally. Texas this and Texas that. Obviously there have been people who fit whichever one of the three dozen or so stereotype characteristics he mentioned and I even know people who fun-lovingly play up the Texas stereotype but so many of the stereotypes don't fit anybody (or many people) anywhere in Texas.

Do you think they do?

But yeah... it was entertaining.

That's Rich's style. He does the same with California and the South. It's geared toward the British public so he's feeding into the perception the world has of America.

There's a big British expat community in Texas due to oil n gas so I was interested in what they thought of us.

Christopher Hitchens likewise has a documentary and it's far more sympathetic.

But as far as Rich's doc goes, you didn't find the part where he describes the state as a high school football game? Even though we are friendly we do have a very competitive streak that can make us seem brutal to others. That was already shown in movies like Dazed and Confused, Friday night Lights and Varsity Blues. There has always been that split between the more free spirited outlaw and the extremely conformist regiment of some sections of Texan culture. Rich nailed it.

[hooky hornstein]

Originally Posted by radiolibre99

But as far as Rich's doc goes, you didn't find the part where he describes the state as a high school football game? Even though we are friendly we do have a very competitive streak that can make us seem brutal to others. That was already shown in movies like Dazed and Confused, Friday night Lights and Varsity Blues. There has always been that split between the more free spirited outlaw and the extremely conformist regiment of some sections of Texan culture. Rich nailed it.

Heh! Yes, that is insightful.

I remember like 30 years ago or so Texas was inundated with recession-escapees from Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc... A young lady who would fleetingly become my first wife moved down from Ohio with her family.

I remember she once marveled at how Texans could simultaneously be so excessively friendly and yet so ruthlessly cut-throat.

She said we try too hard.

[OscarLevant]

How come no one has mentioned the awesomeness that is Machete or Machete Kills ?

They are just flat out fun.. hoping they do the third installment sooner than later.

[radiolibre99]

Originally Posted by OscarLevant

How come no one has mentioned the awesomeness that is Machete or Machete Kills ?

They are just flat out fun.. hoping they do the third installment sooner than later.

Trejo is from LA. Rodriguez is from Texas but his movies while filmed in Texas are rarely set in Texas.

Plus those are niche movies. We are talking classics of cinema. Texas is ever present in the best of American cinema right behind movies set in NYC and LA.