Robert Altman

A few unusual characters and their unconventional therapists cross paths resulting in hilarious interactions.Read More »

Synopsis:
During his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh (Tim Roth) has no greater champion of his work than his devoted brother, Theo (Paul Rhys). As an art gallery owner, Theo pushes for the recognition that Van Gogh’s masterpieces deserve, only to meet with abject failure. While Van Gogh struggles with obscurity and mental illness, Theo faces serious financial difficulties due to poor sales. Eventually, both the Van Gogh brothers begin falling apart over the reality of their unrealized dreams.Read More »

Quote:
Given Robert Altman’s fondness for working with ensemble casts, it comes as no surprise that his films often provide a shambolic cross-section of a particular institution or locale, whether the titular mobile army hospital of M*A*S*H, the indigenous country music scene in the great network narrative Nashville, or the intersecting lives of 20-odd Angelenos in 1993’s Short Cuts. For Short Cuts, Altman and co-screenwriter Frank Barhydt mashed together nine stories and a poem from “dirty realist” writer Raymond Carver, shifting their setting from Carver’s beloved Pacific Northwest to suburban Los Angeles—a place Altman clearly feels much more ambivalent about.Read More »

“No one likes to dwell on past failures, but it’s good to see Jack Tanner back again. As a Democratic presidential candidate in the 1988 race, Tanner seemed hopelessly outmatched, a dark horse trailing the pack. But as an ex-candidate returning to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Tanner is blissfully outside the fray, and while we’re following him, we are as well.Read More »

The Harvard Film Archive writes:
A rare science fiction foray from Altman, Quintet is set in a future ice age where people in an otherwise barren society gather with religious zeal to play a mysterious board game that is suddenly transformed into a life-or-death struggle by corrupt, power-hungry officials. With beautifully dystopian winter vistas filmed in the Arctic Circle and on the site of Montreal’s former Expo ’67 complex, the all-encompassing alternate reality of Quintet offers no comfort or solace. However, it is the hopeless darkness that makes any sign of humanity shockingly foreign and blindingly bright and perhaps helps explain why Altman later remarked, regarding the film’s poor critical response, “I have this great optimism that always translates into pessimism.”Read More »

Fool for Love is a 1985 American drama film directed by Robert Altman. The film stars Sam Shepard, who also wrote both the original play and the adaptation’s screenplay, alongside Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid and Martha Crawford. It was entered into the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. It was filmed in Eldorado and Las Vegas, New Mexico.Read More »

Quote:
Director Robert Altman, famous for his ability to turn any genre inside out, takes aim at film noir with this evocative adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel. Altman’s Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is a relatively unsuccessful private eye living and working in 1970s Los Angeles. Stepping into the shoes of the notorious detective, Gould delivers a captivating performance that is the definition of ’70s hip: he spends the entire film mumbling to himself, smoking cigarettes, and making wisecracks to everyone he encounters. This time around, Marlowe decides to investigate the supposed suicide of his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton). Read More »

Ebert’s plot description:
“A sometime rock singer and a middle-aged Greek-American businessman who meet through a videotape computer dating service…
The movie’s mostly about the perfect couple of the title, a matching of Second City veteran Paul Dooley and Broadway actress Marta Heflin. He’s part of a genuinely bizarre family presided over by a ruthless Greek father who requires compulsory attendance at such family rituals as concerts and dinners. She plays a somewhat forlorn member of a music group, ‘Keepin’ em Off the Streets,’ which is part rock band, part extended communal family.”Read More »

Quote:
Robert Altman’s brilliantly freewheeling satire on the country and western music industry made little impression on the American box office in 1975. This was the year, remember, when a giant shark in Jaws inaugurated the modern blockbuster era. But three decades on, Nashville feels like one of the outstanding accomplishments of ‘New Hollywood’. 24 characters – including singers, musicians, agents, publicists, journalists, and assorted wannabees and hangers-on – converge on the capital of Tennessee, as a confused nation prepares to celebrate its bicentenary.Read More »