Category: Directed by Robert Altman
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MASH is timelessly white liberal. There’s even a lovable Southerner (Tom Skerritt) who knows in that science way Black folks are just folks, but he still wants to be a dick about it. And his white male Northeastern elitist friends, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, are totally fine with that bigotry because, you know, it’s…
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Short Cuts is about a weekend in Los Angeles. It’s a Robert Altman ensemble piece with twenty-two principle characters (though at least six of them are questionable–it really has three stories and then some tangents). It’s “based on the ‘writings’ of Raymond Carver” (emphasis mine), but I’m pretty sure it’s just an adaptation of his…
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Whatever his faults (and faulty films), Robert Altman never bought into what anyone said about him–not his critics, not his audience. The Player is an overtly hostile outing. Altman never had much nice to say about the film, as I recall, but he doesn’t try to say nice things with the film itself. He makes…
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Somehow Altman lets The Gingerbread Man get away from him. Never the direction, which holds up until the end–and seeing Robert Altman direct a fight scene is something to behold–but the plotting. The film starts high, thanks to the compelling plot and the performances, but then the plot gets more and more… not convoluted, but…
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From the first scene in The Long Goodbye, it’s obvious Robert Altman was on to something with casting Elliott Gould as a character (Philip Marlowe) most famously personified by Humphrey Bogart. It isn’t just Gould not being Bogart and Gould not being a traditional noir detective in any way (Gould’s Marlowe is more concerned with…
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Wonderful gem of a movie romance (between Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall) amid a 1930s-set crime drama. Will Carradine pick a life of bank robbing or listen to Duvall and go straight. Great performances from all involved and Altman’s direction excels in the setting. Screenplay by Calder Willingham, Joan Tewkesbury and Altman. DVD, Blu-ray.Continue reading…
The Stop Button 