Short Cuts: Criterion Collection

After the critical and commercial success of The Player (1992) put Robert Altman back on the map—within the Hollywood industry—he wisely used his new found (and fleeting) cache to get a personal project of his green-lighted. With Short Cuts (1993),... 

The Player: Criterion Collection

The 1980s was a tough decade for Robert Altman. After enjoying so much creative freedom in the 1970s it all came crashing down with Popeye (1980), a big budget adaptation of the comic strip of the same name. It was plagued with production problems and... 

Nashville: Criterion Collection

At the time, Nashville (1975) was Robert Altman’s magnum opus, a sprawling tale featuring 24 characters over five days. Not only does he manage to juggle all of these storylines, but is able to seamlessly interconnect them in major or minor ways. The... 

3 Women

During the ’70s, Robert Altman made a series of films that pushed the boundaries of traditional genres into new and exciting areas. M*A*S*H (1970) dared to criticize and parody the Vietnam War under the auspices of the Korean War, while McCabe and... 

O.C. and Stiggs

After Popeye (1980), Robert Altman had effectively alienated himself from most of the Hollywood studios and took to adapting stage plays for the big screen through independent financing. In the early ‘80s, National Lampoon magazine published stories... 

Short Cuts

After the critical and commercial success of The Player (1992) put Robert Altman back on the map—within the Hollywood industry—he wisely used his new found (and fleeting) cache to get a personal project of his green-lighted. With Short Cuts (1993),... 

California Split

In the 1970s, Elliott Gould and Robert Altman were an unbeatable team. The first teamed up with M*A*S*H (1970), a savage satire of the military, then worked together again on a radical contemporary reworking of Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Long Goodbye... 

Secret Honor

Before Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) gave us one of the more definitive examinations of controversial American President, Richard M. Nixon, Robert Altman made a little seen cinematic take of his own, entitled Secret Honor (1984). After burning his bridges... 

Tanner ’88

Just in time for the November U.S. elections, the good folks at Criterion have released Robert Altman’s little-seen (yet influential) Tanner ’88 (1988), an eleven-episode mini-series that he created with Gary Trudeau (of Doonesbury fame). Done for... 

The Long Goodbye

When The Long Goodbye was released in 1973, MGM promptly bungled its ad campaign. Robert Altman’s film radically reworked Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name and the studio had no idea how to market the offbeat movie. It polarized critics...