The Last Picture Show (1971)

Set in the fading Texas town of Anarene in 1951, Peter Bogdanovich's black-and-white film is a coming-of-age drama with a western's soul. The cowboys are gone, the pool hall and picture house are closing, and the teenagers have nothing to inherit but wind and boredom. Ben Johnson, a veteran of John Ford westerns, won an Oscar as Sam the Lion, the old cattleman who embodies everything the town is losing, and Cloris Leachman won for her heartbreaking coach's wife. Larry McMurtry co-wrote it from his own novel. Choose it when you want the modern West as a place of quiet endings rather than gunfights.