You won't be disappointed!

The Worst Film Ever

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I just tried watching this on my DVR recording I got off of TCM a few months back. The soundtrack was so tinny I couldn't understand half of what was being said. I tried the closed captioning but it wasn't there. I suppose it would be funnier if I was actually working in the movie business or lived in LA, but there seemed to be too many "in jokes". And this mess is in the Criterion Collection??

Well if this isn't a film for movie buffs, then I don't know what is. Oh, and it's a brilliant story too! I started a list of my own of all the cameo spots and stopped at about twenty or so because they just kept on coming. Seeing Steve Allen at the Mellen (Sydney Pollack) party made me do a double take because I didn't know when this film was made and I knew Allen passed on a long time ago. The story has a couple of twists that are ingenious and tend to have the viewer keep one's guard up. Like the character of David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), who's made to seem so obvious that he's the spurned writer who's sending Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) the death threat postcards, that you immediately brush him off as the guy Mill has to watch out for. Then there's Lyle Lovett, slinking around in the shadows following Griffin looking like he's about to waste him, and it turns out he's a detective. Very cleverly done, as were all the hints dropped about how this movie might end with the viewing of 'Habeus Corpus'. This is definitely a movie to watch more than once as I thought I had picked up on most of the guest shots, but the credits at the end of the picture revealed a whole bunch more that I never caught the first time around. And if that weren't enough, there's a great piece of trivia the film offers with that murder scene where Tim Robbins' character kills Kahane by ramming his head into the pavement and drowning him in standing water. In the 2003 movie "Mystic River", Sean Penn's character drowns his long time friend believing he killed his daughter. The friend's name was Dave Boyle, played by Tim Robbins!

'The Player (1992)' is a meta and witty inside-joke, jabbing at the ribs of tinsel-town in a cynical yet comedic way, and it manages to sardonically satirise the entire studio system, with a only little bit of self-aggrandising and perhaps an equal measure of self-deprecating. The picture isn't particularly funny, though it can cause some chuckles, but is instead the kind of sly smile inducing mockery that takes its time to dawn on you and isn't immediately obvious. It's this undercurrent that carries the flick much more than the main plot itself, so much so that the actual narrative becomes a part of the running gag as opposed to a vehicle for the individual jokes to spawn from. It's a unique, and somewhat acquired taste of a, film that's usually enjoyable and equally intelligent. 7/10

Robert Altman is one of the rare American directors who have succeeded in keeping loyal to their own style and vision while also being able to carry on for quite a long time. Altman began directing in television in the 1950's, had his cinematic breakthroughs in the 1970's, and kept working hard until his death in 2006. He always kept a healthy distance to Hollywood, but it seems that he -- like so many others -- had a twofold relationship with the dream factory. The influence of classical Hollywood, which the director adored, is apparent in Altman's cinema, but at the same time he expresses great frustration and even loathe towards Hollywood. Both of these attitudes emerge powerfully in his witty, insightful, and lightweight satire of Hollywood, "The Player" (1992) which is filled with references to film history. The story focuses on a Hollywood studio executive, Griffin Mill (played by Tim Robbins) who starts to investigate an abandoned screenwriter sending death threats his way. After murdering the writer more or less unintentionally, Mill falls in love with the writer's girlfriend, but his new life is once again threatened by the police investigating the murder case. In the meantime, Mill's studio is producing a new film whose director wants something else than standard Hollywood entertainment, but the studio has different plans. The line between reality and unreality, fiction and non-fiction begins to blur as Mill's life starts bearing a resemblance to all those film-noir movies whose posters hang on the studio's walls. This is the core of the story to which Altman anchors all the multiple story elements that he enjoys developing. Inter-textual references, satirical jokes, and celebrity appearances might at times feel too much, though they all serve a purpose. The abundance of the film is fragmentary, but this episodic nature of the film does not need to be seen as a flaw, since Altman skillfully keeps it all together. To my mind, the beginning of the film nicely introduces Altman's stylistic program and summarizes this ability of his to keep many threads together. The film begins with a long tracking shot, recording the life inside a Hollywood studio from casual dialogue about movies to awkward pitching producers have to listen to, which seems like a direct reference to Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" (1958) and its famous opening. Like this opening shot, the narrative of "The Player" is overall very self-aware; that is, the spectator is invited into taking the representation to account. One is often paying attention to the way things are structured rather than the things themselves. This might be at times alienating -- and intentionally so -- but Altman also strongly focalizes his narrative to the subjective point of view of his protagonist, enhancing the absurdity of the milieu and its surrounding events. All of these narrative elements serve Altman's purposes of criticizing Hollywood. His criticism, though stark and poignant, is hardly hostile, however. Overall, "The Player" is a veritably lightweight film in the sense that it doesn't have the emotional heaviness of "3 Women" (1977) nor the structural complexity of "Nashville" (1975). The film does have its depth, but it is less striking -- for better and worse. All in all, "The Player" is a very enjoyable film, but it might be a slight letdown for people familiar with the director's earlier work. Nonetheless, a viewer who loves Altman's films will most likely cherish this one as well, perhaps in a fashion similar to Altman's relationship with Hollywood.