“Cookie’s Fortune” (1999)
Definitely falling in the top tier of Altman’s ’90s/’00s third act revival, “Cookie’s Fortune” is the gentlest possible kind of murder mystery (among other things, you know from the out that there hasn’t even been a murder), and a breezy, somewhat forgettable picture that feels a little like a warm-up for the superior “Gosford Park.” Yet it’s one of the more effortlessly charming pictures that Altman made in the later stages of his career, particularly when compared to his work across much of the 1990s. This Southern-fried dramedy sees wealthy Mississippi widow Patricia Neal shoot herself, only for her nieces (Glenn Close and Julianne Moore) to present her demise as a murder that her beloved handyman (Charles S. Dutton) ends up being accused of. With Ned Beatty, Chris O’Donnell, Liv Tyler, Donald Moffat and Courtney B. Vance among the other townspeople, it’s a classic Altman ensemble piece, but is better focused and structured than some of his films thanks to the fine script by Anne Rapp (a veteran script supervisor for Spielberg, Rob Reiner and Lawrence Kasdan, among others), even if it does also feel more inconsequential. Yes, it’s fluff, but it’s fluff made by Altman showing sparks of his prior and future form. [B]
“Dr. T & The Women” (2000)
Alas, Altman’s second collaboration in a row with “Cookie’s Fortune” writer Anne Rapp doesn’t live up to its predecessor, though neither did it deserve the once-in-a-blue-moon F Cinemascore it earned from audiences. Sadly neither a sequel nor a prequel to bizarre Dr. Seuss-penned cult musical “The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T,” the film stars Richard Gere as a well-to-do Texas gynecologist at the center of a whirlwind of women: his breakdown-suffering wife (Farrah Fawcett), his boozy sister-in-law (Laura Dern), his quirky daughters (Tara Reid and Kate Hudson), his lovelorn secretary (Shelley Long), and an attractive golfer (Helen Hunt). The film saw charges of misogyny laid against Altman from some quarters, and it’s not hard to see why, given the cast of almost exclusively blonde women who fall at Gere’s feet. But the characters are more complex than that, and we’ve never bought into the idea that Altman has a misanthropic view of his characters: his is a warts-and-all humanity that doesn’t shy away from human flaws, pulled off by a cast full of good performances from actors who can be patchy (Gere, Reid, Hunt). But this is all not to say that the film is a success: while mostly genial and quiet, it’s a little dull in places and feels awkward and even lacking in confidence in a way that “Cookie’s Fortune” didn’t. Still, an F from audiences feels entirely excessive… [C+]
“Gosford Park” (2001)
“Downton Abbey” 101? Well, basically. Based on a story idea by Bob Balaban and Altman, “Gosford Park” was written by Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey.” Set in 1932, a few years later than ‘Downton,’ the film nonetheless features on the same above the stairs/below the stairs dynamic of the privileged and servants (in fact ‘Downton’ was originally conceived as a ‘Gosford’ spin-off). While it’s a bit of a subplot, the movie centers on a movie producer (Balaban) who travels to the affluent English countryside to do research for a Charlie Chan movie he is producing. But a murder in the household turns the household on its head for what becomes a twist in this Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery. The cast is a heavyweight cadre of English actors, including Clive Owen, Emily Morton, Helen Mirren, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kelly Macdonald and many more, plus Ryan Phillippe posing as a Scottish butler. And as far as Altman goes, it’s an atypical movie, classic and formal in nature with very composed blocking instead of the shaggy dog, overlapping dialogue, abrupt cuts and zooms he’s so fond of (which is probably why the Academy loved it and nominated it for 8 Oscars). It’s an admirable piece of refined craftsmanship, but it’s tad short of the vibrancy Altman’s more rogue filmmaking usually delivers at its best. [B]
“The Company” (2003)
Gaining a fraction of the plaudits or box office as “Gosford Park,” “The Company” was little loved at the time but deserves to be mentioned as one of the last great works by a great director. Bringing Altman’s interest in ensembles to an inevitable conclusion, the film in theory centers on young dancer Loretta (Neve Campbell: the “Scream” star actually came up with the idea for the film, produced it and convinced a reluctant Altman to do it), but as the title might imagine, it’s really the story of a collective, namely Chicago’s famous Joffrey Ballet. Along with ostensible lead Campbell (who’s very good and seemingly happy to take the back seat for a film that could well have been a vanity project), there are a few recognizable faces, with James Franco as her love interest and Malcolm McDowell in excellent form as the company’s director. But on the whole, the faces we see are the real-life dancers in the Joffrey, and the film is less concerned with story or with character as it is in the everyday movements of the whole, functioning as a procedural documenting the blood, sweat and tears that go into great art. Using a digital camera for the first time, Altman’s camera is as dextrous as ever. The result is a film that feels like a sort of fictional equivalent of a Frederick Wiseman documentary, and utterly fitting as one of Altman’s final statements. [A-]
“A Prairie Home Companion” (2006)
Altman’s swan song, on which Paul Thomas Anderson acted as back-up director because of Altman’s shaky health, “A Prairie Home Companion” is a pleasurable musical comedy that though slight feels like a fitting grace note upon which to end a legendary career. Entirely Altman-esque, given its sprawling ensemble cast and criss-crossing scenes and dialogue, there’s an incredibly crisp vibrancy to the entire affair —Altman may have been in failing health, but you’d hardly know it by the way he packs so much life into the film. Featuring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly and Lindsay Lohan plus Virginia Madsen as an empathic angelic figure who feels retrospectively prophetic, ‘Prairie Home’ is a fictionalized account of the behind-the-scenes drama involved in the long-running Garrison Keillor public radio show of the same name as it plays its final broadcast. With a script written by Keillor himself (who also appears), it’s a musical reverie as much as it is a comedy, making “A Prairie Home Companion” both an appropriate and an endearing farewell to Altman’s storied and highly versatile career. [B]
The above is a rundown of every theatrically released feature film that Altman completed as director, but he was involved in plenty of other projects too. Nearly a decade before his feature debut, Altman got story credit on Richard Fleischer’s noir “Bodyguard” starring Lawrence Tierney. And prefiguring his stage adaptation “Come Back to the Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” by decades, he co-directed the Warner Bros. documentary “The James Dean Story,” intended to cash in on the star’s death, in 1957.
And then there was a host of TV films and episodes: Altman spend the decade between “The Delinquents” and “Countdown” shooting episodes of shows, including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Maverick,” “Bonanza” and the groundbreaking war series “Combat!” He returned to TV in the 1980s for a series of TV movies, including HBO’s “The Laundromat” starring Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan in 1985, a double-bill of Harold Pinter adaptations in 1987 called “Basements” (most notably featuring John Travolta and Tom Conti in a version of “The Dumb Waiter”), and a CBS version of “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” with Jeff Daniels, Eric Bogosian and Peter Gallagher.
Best remembered now might be his 11-part HBO miniseries “Tanner ’88,” a terrific political drama from “Doonesbury” creator Garry Trudeau following a politician (Altman talisman Michael Murphy) seeking the presidential nomination against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. Altman directed the whole thing, making it intriguingly ahead of its time in terms of big-name filmmakers finding a home on pay cable, and the show went on to influence “The West Wing” and Steven Soderbergh’s similar “K Street” (Altman made a two-hour Sundance Channel sequel in 2004, “Tanner On Tanner,” too). He also co-created and directed an episode of anthology series “Gun,” and in 1998 helmed the pilot for a tech-world comedy written by Trudeau called “Killer App,” but the show wasn’t picked up.
Finally, outside of the filmmaker’s own massive canon, it’s worth mentioning Ron Mann‘s 2014 documentary “Altman” (which we reviewed in Venice that year). It’s a fuzzy, warm portrait of the filmmaker —perhaps necessarily cursory given the breadth of his output— but valuable if for nothing else than seeing so many of his friends and collaborators try to grapple with a definition of the word “Altmanesque.” As we think this retrospective on his work proves, it’s a term that contains multitudes.
— with Nicholas Laskin & Rodrigo Perez