Nashville

Year of Release:  1975
Director:  Robert Altman
Screenplay:  Joan Tewkesbury
Starring:  Ned Beatty, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin
Running Time:  160 minutes
Genre: Comedy-drama

This film follows the numerous intersecting stories of a large group of people in Nashville, Tennessee, over a five day period in the run-up to a rally for a populist outsider candidate running for President.  Most of the characters are involved to a greater or lesser extent in the worlds of music or politics.

This is a long, sprawling, epic comedy-drama with about twenty-four main characters, an hour of musical numbers and a multitude of interlocking storylines.  The film was written by Joan Tewkesbury based on her own experiences of visiting Nashville, although as was often the case with Altman, much of the dialogue and many subplots were improvised on set.  The large ensemble cast is impressive, particularly Ronee Blakely as an emotionally fragile singer, Geraldine Chaplin as a chatty BBC Radio reporter, Henry Gibson as a politically ambitious Grand Ole Opry star and Gwen Wells as an ambitious but talentless aspiring singer.  It also features an early appearance by Jeff Goldblum as the silent "Tricycle Man", and Shelley Duvall as an eccentric groupie.  It is a film that is very much a product of it's time.  On the surface it is about Nashville, but really it is about where America was at politically and culturally in 1975, and scarily enough is still quite relevant today.  It does require a lot of attention, and the length, loose structure and lack of a single overarching story may be off-putting to some viewers, but it is very rewarding, which is funny, dramatic and sometimes moving.  It also has a great soundtrack. 

Ronee Blakely, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson and Barbara Baxley welcome you to Nashville   
 

 

The Player

Year of Release:  1992
Director:  Robert Altman
Screenplay:  Michael Tolkin, based on the novel The Player by Michael Tolkin
Starring:  Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James, Cynthia Stevenson
Running Time: 124 minutes
Genre:  Black comedy, satire, thriller

Griffin Mill (Robbins) is an executive at a Hollywood studio.  His job is to listen to submissions from writers and decide whether or not they would make good films.  By his own estimation he says "yes" to 12 out of 50,000 submissions a year.  As you might expect, he has more than a few enemies among screenwriters.  Mill starts to receive threatening postcards from a writer whose pitch he rejected.  To make matters worse, his job is threatened by an ambitious new executive at the studio.

The Player marked something of a comeback for maverick Hollywood director Robert Altman who became known in the 1970s for such iconic films as MASH (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975).  The Player features several Altman trademarks, most notably the large cast, complex, overlapping dialogue, and mobile camera work, particularly in the film's famous opening scene: a seven and a half minute unbroken shot roving through a studio lot, eavesdropping on pitches and conversations.
The movie manages to be both affectionate and acidic towards Hollywood. Some of the satire is quite scathing, but there is a real love for movies that shines through.  There are numerous references to other films, with the camera frequently lingering on movie posters or photos of stars and directors that somehow comment on the events in the story.  It also has numerous celebrity cameos (including Bruce Willis, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, Jack Lemmon, Julia Roberts, Harry Belafonte and John Cusack).
The film flows along with it's main plot being subsumed among various digressions, twists and subplots.  The jokes are genuinely funny, for the most plot, and the thriller element is quite intriguing.  At the end the film subverts the traditional "Hollywood ending" managing to be both happy and surprisingly bleak.
Tim Robbins is good in the lead managing to be both charismatic and suave as well as shockingly cruel and ruthless without ever being entirely unsympathetic.  Whoopi Goldberg stands out as a tenacious detective, as does country singer Lyle Lovett as a creepy cop.  Richard E. Grant also makes the most of a small role as a flamboyant, pretentious director.

Tim Robbins is The Player