A sprawling LA cityscape twinkles in the distance as helicopters are filled with poisons to spread across the landscape and eradicate some treasonous foe. The helicopters take to the skies in an explosion of light and fly in tight military formation, looming over the heads of all 22 primary characters of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts as …
I have never hiked, but I have friends who have done some crazy hikes. I have no survival skills. However, one day in a post partum depression phase after a walk, I decided to run a marathon. I needed to prove something to myself, at least, that I could do something with my life. Checking off the miles on my training schedule had me progressing and pushing my limits. Every long…
In Dan Gilroy’s marvelous directorial debut, the gritty, neo-noir Nightcrawler; a gaunt and greasy looking Jake Gyllenhaal gives his most captivating performance to date. Playing the mysterious psychopath Lou Bloom; a petty thief who stumbles upon the underworld of crime journalism, subsequently discovering his …
Robert Altman never really slowed down throughout his entire career. He made masterpieces in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s right up until his death in late 2006. He made films unique to him, his stamp was on everything he did from M*A*S*H* through his final film A Prairie Home Companion. For this final film …
How could this possibly be a Robert Altman film? There’s only one character, for starters and it’s all set in one room. Far from the sweeping character mosaics and open spaces of M*A*S*H*, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, A Wedding, and HealtH comes Secret Honor: a film version of a one-man play about a post- …
What does a modern vampire do nowadays? If you’re immortal you’ve probably travelled the world, read all of the books, heard all of the music, and seen all of the things that time lays out before you. Up until now, the perspective of the vampire has either been of the monstrous Dracula or the teenage whiner with a god complex. Few films delve into a magic …
Following a string of career-defining films, such as M.A.S.H. (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and The Long Goodbye (1973), Altman set his sights on the country music capital of the world. Nashville is just as iconic, if not more so, as any other Altman film because it accomplishes so much with such grace and finesse. It is an …
Akira Kurosawa only made two sequels in his long career. The first was a follow-up to his debut film Sanshiro Sugata titled Zoku Sugata Sanshiro. His second was Sanjuro, which followed his smash hit masterpiece Yojimbo. Sanjuro is a masterpiece in its own right and much better if you don’t watch Yojimbo just before. Not to say that …
More beautiful in death than in life, the stripes of her electric beehive set off by the stark white of her medical gown, a creature known only as The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) takes her first steps in the laboratory of Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive). She is not his first ungodly creation but rather the intended mate of her predecessor …
Long mired in music rights issues and considered a relatively minor entry in the Robert Altman canon, California Split now looks more like a crucial point in the evolution of film sound technology and one of the best exemplars of Altman’s patented brand of naturalistic cinema. It’s a transition point between the genre-revising likes of …