best movie i've ever seen.

Admirable film.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Cookie's Fortune is another ensemble character piece from Robert Altman, although it's of a lot less magnitude than some of his previous works. The story centers around a group of citizens in the quaint town of Holly Springs, who are thrown into disarray by the sudden death of Cookie Orcutt (Patricia Neal). Altman's scope is much more intimate than some of his other ensemble pieces, and it fits the characters nicely. The whole thing, accompanied by a nice blues score, has this quaint and relaxed atmosphere to it. This makes the film move by at a slower pace, but I never really felt like it dragged or anything, it just sort of coasted along.There are several characters that we focus on, from Cookie's nieces Camille and Cora (Glenn Close and Julianne Moore) to her best friend Willis (Charles S. Dutton) to the police (Chris O'Donnell, Ned Beatty and a few others) to Cora's estranged daughter Emma (Liv Tyler), who has coincidentally just strolled back into town after being gone for a while. Cookie's death sends waves through the small community and turns everyone's situations upside down, resulting in comedic strides and a police investigation. When focusing on the individual characters, I definitely enjoyed myself most of the time, especially when it came to the erratic and revoltingly vain Camille (played with utter theatrical delight by Close) and the eternally laid-back Willis, but I don't think the script managed to bring the characters together in an entirely fluid manner.This especially became a problem when the film was focused on Camille and Cora, who felt as though they were in an entirely different film. The majority of it had that bluesy, Southern atmosphere to it but then you get to the scenes with the two of them and it's like they're in a Tennesse Williams play. The characters are supposed to be a contrast to the rest of the ensemble, but the tones of their sections don't mesh at all with the rest of the film and it's quite distracting. The cast for the most part does a fine job, Close being the only one who impressed me on any major level, but Tyler and O'Donnell stick out like sore thumbs, the flattest pieces of wood in an otherwise quite alive ensemble.I think my main problem with it though came from the final act, which is just a bizarre disaster. Out of nowhere the investigation starts turning up revelations of different familial bonds and lies from the past, but they truly come out of nowhere and ultimately add nothing to the film. It gets so confusing and incoherent in the final act, I don't have a clue what possessed writer Anne Rapp. It drags the film down considerably, but the rest of it was alright, if relatively insignificant.

No spoilers here. The movie is about love, deception, "rapscallionality" and other cool things in a small town, with the kind of cinematography we associate with Altman. Pearl is the right term to use for some of Altman's ensemble pieces: they are layers on layers on layers, and they are built up very slowly, just as a pearl grows.I don't admire everything that Altman has done; there are a number of his movies that didn't rock my socks, but when he hits it, he hits it (as with Short Cuts, McCabe and Mrs Miller, and recently with Prairie Home Companion), with scary precision. You sit there in the theater seat feeling as if not just the director, but the whole cast and crew have you in their sights. Part of this has to be due to Altman's working so much with so many of the same actors. But also, he is simply a great ensemble director.Cookie's Fortune starts out in a quite leisurely fashion, and I had to warn some of my friends not to go to a late night show, but it gets quick fast. While I think the whole cast was great, for me the on-going show-stopper was the performances of Glenn Close and Charles Dutton. It was so clear to me that these two actors, both with considerable stage experience, were having a lot of fun chewing up each other's scenery, and their voice control is what one would expect from them.In Altman's best films there are a multitude of small gem parts, and this is no exception.

We can pretty much always expect something good from Robert Altman, and "Cookie's Fortune" doesn't disappoint. Focusing on a suicide in a Mississippi town and how it reveals some secrets about various people, they make the most of everything. Camille Dixon (Glenn Close) is a character of her own: when she sees that her aunt Cookie (Patricia Neal) has taken her own life (the old woman wants to rejoin her late husband), she tries to make it look like a murder, claiming that only crazy people commit suicide; watching the movie, anyone would have to agree that Camille's the craziest person in the movie.I will assert that this is Charles S. Dutton's best movie yet. As Cookie's caretaker who gets charged with the murder, he shows himself as strong, but not ridiculous. Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Ned Beatty, Courtney B. Vance and Lyle Lovett also have some great lines. The movie mainly goes to show that despite the racism in the South, white people and black people have a lot more exposure to each other than in the rest of the country. Really good.

One might call Cookie's Fortune a 'minor' effort from Robert Altman, a filmmaker who once commented that each film "is all part of the same picture", or rather one long movie with bits and pieces making up a career whole. But it has enough going for it through its very competent cast and interesting script to keep it afloat from being the kind of small film little old ladies might watch on TV during the day. In that sense it isn't as 'heavy' as some of Altman's other work. It is also cool enough to treat the subject of a mystery around a suicide with enough humanity to make some scenes smile-worthy. Considering some of the darker elements in the script, Altman depicts this to the point where- get this- Cookie's Fortune is sometimes shown on the HBO family channel! Is it really a kid's film? I'm not sure, but it isn't work for only one age group- its appeal from its cast of a collective of small towners is appealing to most in the audience. That the cast- Glenn Close, Liv Tyler, (especially) Charles S. Dutton, even Chris O'Donnell- gels and plays some of the dialog sincerely even when its meant to not be taken seriously at all, is a credit to the filmmaker. That it also might not be quite as memorable as some of the director's major films is and is not a fault. It is a fault because the subject matter is sort of stuck in a certain genre realm. It is not because the subject mater is also very much more intelligent than would be expected at times. I was also fond of certain scenes and interactions with the actors, the rhythm of it all, like early on with Dutton and the actress Patricia Neal who plays the old lady. I also really like the climax. So it's a good work about the rumblings and eccentricities of a small town, the good in people as well as the lesser parts, and parts of greed and death seen through a light that is not aiming for anything 'cheap', so to speak.