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Miss Zacharek writes:
"During the course of Altman's career, there were times ("Prêt-à-Porter," "Kansas City") we wondered what he was nattering on about, times we weren't sure he had anything more to offer us."
Bad, bad writing, Stephanie. To lump as audacious a film as Kansas City alongside the truly grating Pret-a-Porter shows no critical discernment whatsoever. I haven't seen very many kind words for Kansas City, either from the Paulettes or from the next generation down of critic-mediocrities. It's possible, that after the jumbled, overpraised messes of The Player and Short Cuts, that the pared-away intensity of Kansas City was neither comforting nor expected. It's a dark movie, but not in a way that feels falsely pessimistic. Of Altman's later films, Kansas City comes closest to embodying the fatalistic spirit of his 1970s work -- and KC is a good deal superior to most of that. I hated McCabe & Mrs. Miller: it's always struck me as phony and posturing, unwatchable even with as great an actress as Julie Christie on hand.
Also, Stephanie, don't use "we" in making critical pronouncements. You speak for no one other than yourself.
Likewise, The Company and the dismal Cookie's Fortune don't belong lumped together either. Cookie's Fortune was like a late-night Cinemax sexploitation picture that had had the porno scenes removed (a quality owed entirely to Anne Rapp's atrocious writing).
The Company is a different animal. A "serviceable charmer" it is not. I wonder how many times Stephanie has seen this movie. I found it irritating the first-go-round, but something drew me back to the Company again and again. Viewing by viewing, the movie yields its treasures slowly, so that the fragmented, almost jigsaw approach coalesces over time into something seamless. It's one of his richest works, I think, much more so than that amiable weekend in the country called Gosford Park.
Proof positive that Kansas City and The Company will better stand the test of time than the Altman films approved by the herd: Look at how many dumb mainstream critics (including the ones who are "more alternative than thou") have dismissed these two, how blind they willfully are to pleasures not shared by the rest of the pack.
