I loved all of the Altman films that we watched because they each had a unique style that is unseen by other movies. My favorite was The Long Goodbye. I usually don't go for movies from the 70s just because from what I've seen they weren't very good but I actually liked this one a lot. I would recommend this to anyone even if they aren't a fan of Altman I would have to say that they need to look at this film before they judge him completely. I'll admit that Nashville was not my favorite film of all the ones we have seen from him but it has potential to be different in a sense that it was really bare boned, ruff film. There was no perfection about this film which I think kind of gives it an edge if you will. Finally The Player was an interesting perspective on the Hollywood behind the scenes kind of movie. I liked it though and I hope that I can view some more of his films in the future. Hopefully he lives up to his name and his other films are as good as these ones.
What I liked about these films the most was that they were really realistic so they are pretty easy to compare to today. For instance some may say that Nashville or at least the killing at the end compares to the death of John Lennon. I would not agree with this just because the person who killed John Lennon at a reason where as the killer of Barbra Jean did not or at least they didn't show that. Then I think that everyone can compare to The Long Goodbye just because I know that everyone has been used by someone before whether it was for friendship or some other reason, I think we all can say that we've been there. But maybe we aren't all as big of push overs as Marlowe but we still can feel for the guy. Finally The Player of course can be compared to Hollywood today I'm sure that there people that get their stories turned down all of the time for whatever reason and I'm sure that these people receive hate mail and death threats all the time. They just don't kill the suspected stocker and then fall in love with his girlfriend. Whats weird is that while they are different they have a reoccurring theme.
In all of Altman's films that we watched the reoccuring theme is that not everything is as it seems. For instance in Nashville we never know what's going to happen because we getting pulled around from story to story never really stopping to look around at the surroundings in order to see the facts. Even in the end when we know whats going to happen its so unexpected that we almost convince ourselves that it wasn't the guy with the violin box who killed her it was the officer. Its weird how the brain works. But anyways then theres Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, we never really see that his friend really did the killings we are led as Marlowe is to believe that its the mofia like guy who killed her. Yet again a suprise ending, I think thats what makes his movies so good because in the end they leave you speechless like how did I miss that. Same with in The Player we follow the character of Griffin and the whole movie we are thinking like him and we as well as he fall for the same mistake. We all overlooked the real killer when in reality it should have been so obvious nothing is that easy and nothing disappears over night. This is a director that should be missed in future classes.
