Honoring Robert Altman's centennial, plus the week's best movies in L.A.

Los Angeles Times

21 hours ago

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week, The Times published a series of articles looking at possible different futures for Los Angeles. Greg Braxton wrote two pieces, including one about Hollywood's long-standing fascination with depicting the destruction of the city, including 'Escape From L.A.' to 'Blade Runner,' 'This Is the End' and many more.
Braxton noted, 'In 'Los Angeles Plays Itself,' [Thom Andersen's] 2003 documentary chronicling the portrayal of the city through cinema history, Andersen aims his own wrecking ball. The film's narrator quotes the late Mike Davis, a noted historian and urbanist, when he says that Hollywood 'takes a special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles — a guilty pleasure shared by most of its audience.''
He also specifically examined 'Miracle Mile,' Steve De Jarnatt's 1988 apocalyptic romantic adventure drama featuring the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from La Brea to Fairfax.
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is in the midst of 'Robert Altman's America: A Centennial Review,' a look at the monumental filmmaker's wildly unpredictable body of work to mark 100 years since his birth. The designated home of Altman's personal print collection, the archive will show many of the films in 35mm.
Writing when Altman was to receive an honorary Oscar (an occasion that turned out to be just a few months before his death in 2006), Peter Rainer called him 'perhaps the most American of directors. But his Americanness is of a special sort and doesn't really connect up to any tradition except his own.'
Comparing Altman to such filmmakers as John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, Sam Peckinpah, Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, Rainer added, 'Altman, who has ranged as widely as any of these directors across the American panorama, is a more mysterious and allusive artist. He is renowned for the buzzing expansiveness of his stories, the crisscrossed plots and people, but what strikes home most of all in this sprawl is a terrible sense of aloneness. … If being an American means being rooted to the land, to a tradition, a community, then it also means being forever in fear of dispossession. Altman understands this better than any other filmmaker. It's what gives even his rowdiest comic escapades their bite of woe.'
The series began last week with 'Nashville,' a movie that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and which this column has recently discussed. This Saturday there will be a fantastic double-bill of 1977's '3 Women' starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek with 1982's 'Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,' starring Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Cher.
Other pairings include 'M*A*S*H' and 'Brewster McCloud,' 'The Long Goodbye' and 'California Split,' 'Thieves Like Us' and 'Kansas City,' plus 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' and 'Popeye.' The series concludes with separate screenings of 'The Player' and 'Short Cuts,' which reestablished Altman's vitality in the 1990s.
As Times critic Charles Champlin once wrote, 'When Altman's movies are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are infuriating because there is something so arrogantly self-destructive about them.'
In a 2000 interview with Susan King for a retrospective at LACMA that included a 25th anniversary screening of 'Nashville,' the often-irascible Altman had this to say about his career.
'There isn't any filmmaker who ever lived who has had a better shake than I did,' he said. 'I have never been out of work and the only thing I haven't made are these big, popular films. I have never wanted to and I never will. I would fail at it. I would be late for work.'
The American Cinematheque is premiering a newly-created 70mm print of the director's cut of Steven Spielberg's 1977 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' The film will play at the Egyptian on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then at the Aero on Aug. 29 and Aug. 31.
'Close Encounters' was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Spielberg's first for directing. It won for Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography as well as a special achievement award for its special effects.
The story, of course, revolves around a series of sightings of UFOs around the world that leads to a spacecraft being studied in Wyoming and interactions with extraterrestrial beings. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and François Truffaut.
In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, 'The special effects conceived by Spielberg and executed by Douglas Trumbull and a staff that seems to number in the hundreds are dazzling and wondrous. That's not surprising: The surprise is that 'Close Encounters' is so well leavened with humor. … 'Close Encounters' stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.'
Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and 'Vivre sa vie' in 35mm
Anyone looking to prepare for the upcoming release of Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague,' about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless' and a snapshot of Paris at the moment of the French New Wave, might well want to check out Sunday's 35mm screening of Godard's 1962 'Vivre sa vie' at the Los Feliz Theatre.
Starring Anna Karina, then in the midst of a tempestuous marriage to Godard, the film features what may be her greatest performance as Nana, an aspiring actress who finds herself drawn into the world of prostitution. The film stretches from the manic joy of her dancing around a pool table to the quiet devastation of seeing her tear-stained face as she watches a movie. There's also an utterly heart-wrenching conclusion.
In an appreciation of Karina after her death in 2019 at age 79, Justin Chang wrote, 'We often speak admiringly of a performer's screen presence or charisma. Karina possessed something more: flinty intelligence and deadpan wit, dark feline eyes that could project playfulness and melancholy without her saying a word. She incarnated both a matter-of-fact toughness and an expressive glamour worthy of a silent screen star.'
'Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues'
The Aero Theatre will have a rare screening of 1972's 'Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues' in 35mm on Sunday afternoon. Director Paul Williams and actors Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow will be on hand for a Q&A moderated by screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, who recently declared it 'the best 1970s movie you've never heard of.'
Adapted from a novel by brothers Michael Crichton and Douglas Crichton (credited as 'Michael Douglas'), the story involves a Harvard student (Robert F. Lyons) who takes a job from his best friend (Lithgow, in his film debut) delivering marijuana across the country. Along the way he meets a woman (Hershey) and after she gets busted by a corrupt cop (Charles Durning), he tries to set things straight.
'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion' and 'Grosse Pointe Blank'
On Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly Cinema will have a double-bill of two comedies from 1997: David Mirkin's 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion' and George Armitage's 'Grosse Pointe Blank.'
With a screenplay by Robin Schiff adapting her own play, 'Romy and Michele' is about two friends (Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino) who concoct a plan to impress everyone at their 10-year high school reunion by lying about how successful they are. The film also features clothes by 'Clueless' costume designer Mona May.
In his original review, Jack Matthews wrote, 'The dead-pan performances of Sorvino and Kudrow, who played Michelle in the original play, are perfect. Romy and Michelle are cartoon characters, but the actresses make them both real and enormously sympathetic. … Beneath the endless silliness of the movie beats a real heart, and its theme of loyal friendship keeps propping it up every time the thin walls of the story seem about to collapse. Though 'Romy and Michelle' doing Tucson doesn't take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.'
From a screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and star John Cusack, 'Grosse Pointe Blank' features Cusack as a succeful hit man attempting to attend his 10-year high school reunion and rewin the heart of an old girlfriend (Minnie Driver). That is, until a cadre of competing assassins and federal agents all show up as well.
In his original review, Kenneth Turan drew comparisons to Armitage's earlier caper comedy 'Miami Blues,' writing, 'A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously … Clever enough to make jokes about Greco-Roman wrestling and make them funny, 'Grosse Pointe Blank's' greatest success is the way it maintains its comic attitude. Working with a smart script and actors who get the joke, director Armitage pulls off a number of wacky action set pieces. Even if you think you've heard actors say, 'I love you, we can make this relationship work,' in every conceivable situation, this film has a few surprises in store.'
U.S. premiere of 'Onda Nova' in 4K
Also on Sunday, Mezzanine will have the U.S. premiere of a 4K restoration of the 1983 Brazilian film 'Onda Nova,' which translates as 'New Wave.' Directed by Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia, the film was withheld by the Brazilian dictatorship and only released there after a lengthy legal battle. It is thought to have never before screened in the U.S.
Women's soccer was banned in Brazil until 1979, and women were only allowed to start teams in 1983, the year 'Onda Nova' was produced. The film brings a defiantly queer and anarchically rebellious attitude to the story of a group of women on a newly formed soccer team and features special appearances by figures involved in Brazil's struggle for freedom, including musician Caetano Veloso, journalist Osmar Santos and well-known male athletes Casagrande and Wladimir.