Rating: 
Summary: One of the best movies ever made
Review: Nashville is one of the most interesting, intelligent and compelling movies to ever come out of Hollywood. Featuring bravura performances from each of the 24 main characters, it is a brilliant examination of American society, politics, religion, showbusiness and culture. This 157 minute film tackles all of these issues at a steady pace (the director's control is absolutely superb), leading up to a shattering denouement. Despite being made in 1976, Nashville still packs a hell of a punch - its themes are still relevant today. The eponymous setting of the movie is synonymous with politics. From the start of the movie, a campaign wagon for a presidential candidate drives all over the town spewing political slogans and ideals to the residents: this wagon links all of the characters together. As Robert Altman follows it, he focuses on all of Nashville's protagonists using brief vignettes that each tell a short story of their own - gradually, all of these characters intertwine and eventually, converge on the eve of a political rally. Each of these vignettes are so concise, so telling in their exposition of the character, that the viewer almost immediately fathoms an understanding of what each protagonist is like. Who to fear; who to admire; who to respect; who to pity. Altman peppers the movie with over one hour of music - after all, Nashville is the home of country/western. The lyrics ring true with certain characters and elicit emotional responses from the viewer. "We [Americans] must be doing something right to last two hundred years," sings one character at the start of the movie - later on, scenes that show a woman forced to strip, as well as a shooting, deliver a sharp ring of irony to the lyric. All of the performances in the movie are brilliant, the most notable of which is Lily Tomlin. She is especially good as the mother of two deaf children, all the while struggling with her marriage. Her husband makes no effort to translate his deaf son's story of swimming lessons: "what's he sayin'?" he asks. Her sorrow translates beautifully to the screen with the help of Nashville's score. Each actor conveys their character's emotions to the viewer with relative ease, which consequently heightens understanding and compels the viewer to watch on with interest. Because the viewer can connect with each of the characters, the finale is that much more heartbreaking. Ultimately, Nashville is a brilliant character study of epic scope and proportions. The technical brilliance behind the movie in conjunction with the excellent performances culminates to create one of the most rewarding and intelligent movies in motion picture history. Nashville leaves the viewer with one clear impression: each of us, whether we like it or not, are part of a society that is both good and bad - behind all the politics, the foul play and the heartbreak, we can still manage to carve out an existence of sorts, and ultimately be happy.
Rating:
Summary: Altman's Masterpiece
Review: Robert Altman's Nashville is the filmmaker's masterpiece. He weaves the stories of 24 characters into a magical tapestry. The movie takes place over the course of several days in the music city. We get into the lives of several big country music stars, a rock trio, a hippie from LA out to see her uncle and sick aunt, a couple of would be singers and others. The connecting theme running through the movie is that a campaign worker for a presidential candidate (who is never seen, but only heard from a van touting his candidacy that rolls through the city) from a new radical party tries to get support from the musicians to appear at a campaign rally. The outstanding performances abound including Henry Gibson as an extremely vain and egotistical country singer, Ronee Blakely as a sick and recovering country star, Ned Beatty as a label executive for the musicians and the husband of Lily Tomlin and Michael Murphy as the campaign worker. The stars all wrote and sang the songs that appear in the film with Keith Carradine winning an Academy Award for his haunting tune "I'm Easy". This film could have been an overblown mess, but Mr. Altman's deft hand guides you through the twists and turns to the surprising conclusion.
Rating: 
Summary: An overrated mildly interesting supremely annoying snoozer
Review: "Nashville, along with Chinatown and The Wild Bunch, is one of the most overrated movies of the past 30 years. Why some 'film buffs' consider it to be Altman's best is beyond me; they're probably still deluded by superstar critic Pauline Kael's gushing review of it that's been reprinted many times over the years (though they've long since forgotten and abandoned Kael's ridiculous suggestion that Bertolucci's bizzare butter-drama "Last Tango in Paris" is comparable in importance to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," or her panning of not only most of Antonioni's and Resnais' films but also Fellini's 8-1/2 as "self-absorption that fails to reach out imaginatively"!). McCabe and Mrs. Miller, MASH, Short Cuts (the Son of Nashville in Los Angeles with very little singing, thank you very much), the Player, Vincent and Theo, 3 Women--- these are all far superior to Nashville and much more deserving of their reputations and viewers' attentions. The interweaving of the characters' stories(a la Short Cuts), the innovative narrative techniques, and the not very flattering things Altman has to say about American society are very charming and interesting but what you have to sit through to find them, is not. Why? Because this film is a musical, it has hardly anything but country singing throughout. If you want to rack your brains to try to dig some satire out of nearly 2 hours of unbearably annoying country singing (yeah, I know it was meant to be annoying, but masochism for the sake of understanding art has its limits) by a bunch of characters whose lives run into each other in the 30 minutes or so when they're not warbling on stage, be my guest; I think I'll try Hee-Haw instead. In fact, I'd rather interpret Scorsese's equally annoying but less pretentious rock-documentary "The Last Waltz" as satire; that makes more sense: it's an absurd enough American 'slice of life' ---a bunch of burned out post-hippie musicians symbolic of the increasingly counter-culture influenced American society of the mid '70s, masterfully captured on film with all their warts---and much funnier than Nashville throughout if only looked at the right way, especially when Bob Dylan opens his mouth . Why should the fact that the people captured in "The Last Waltz" are actual 'famous' musicians and not 'acting' (though inevitably influenced by and prescribed into a certain 'role' by the mere presence of a camera), or , not actors 'acting' as musicians (as in Nashville) make such a big difference? It sure doesn't to me. Why should only Nashville qualify as satire just because it was meant as and pretends to be satire? I don't buy this film's masterpiece status and neither should you just because a bunch of 'famous critics' have developed a consensus that it is.
Rating:
Summary: A Moving Experience
Review: I saw this movie for the first time at the age of thirteen, and just cried. At the time I couldn't figure out exactly why I had such a tremendous emotional response to the film, but have now come to realize that the shear beauty of "Nashville" is simply overpowering. You see, "Nashville" is a movie about America, and its people. The themes studied are as broad and varied as its story's twenty-four main characters. However, as the result of Robert Altman's brilliant direction, the picture never becomes didactic or unfocused in any ways. Instead, it is the most realistic depiction of our nation captured on film. I cannot put into words the tidal wave of emotion the viewer experiences in the movie's final scene when all the story's characters are united for a single moment in song. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. No, I never lived through Watergate, Vietnam, or Kennedy's assasination, but I don't think that could matter any less. I believe "Nashville" is as relevant to America today as it was twenty-five years ago. If you have never seen this, order it NOW! Believe me, it is worth owning.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks Paramount...
Review: ...for working in this must-own DVD between the Friday the 13ths and Pet Sematarys. Truly one of the seminal films of the 1970s, and it has aged well. Note to fans of the movie, there was a very good retrospective interview with Mr. Altman and surviving cast and crew members in the July 2000 issue of "Premiere" magazine. The crucial difference between this movie and the recent, wildly overrated Magnolia, is that Nashville's startling climactic event doesn't seem like a slap in the face to the actors.
Rating:
Summary: Best film of 1975!
Review: Although I think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"is an excellent film,I feel this is the one that should have won! This is epic story-telling & film-making at its best;it stays with u long after it's over.I see it as a thinly-disguised expose of how America exploits its people in so many ways.How people are just pawns in the rat race for fame & fortune.It displays how phony,morally & ethically lacking people in the political & music worlds are,but I think it goes much deeper than that.This surface story speaks about the American nation & way of life,period.The scene that brings everything together for me and states its theme best is when the drifter,who throughout the movie is the one character who seems to have no purpose being there,looks up at the American flag which seems to confirm his feelings about the shallow people & situations he's observed around him,& commits a final,violent act.I think this movie,and especially this scene,speak volumes about the state of this nation at the time and a forerunner of things to come.An unflattering portrait of America to be sure,but definitely a must-see!
Rating:
Summary: A Unique Masterpiece!
Review: I loved this movie. Loved it! I just saw this on widescreen DVD and had never seen it before. It's the first movie I have seen in a few years that had me smiling from ear to ear as it ended, not because it was a feel-good movie but because it was so exhilarating to see a work so flawlessly assembled, so marvellously written and acted, and finally one so overflowing with the collective creative energy of the cast and crew. There are more memorable characters and vignettes in this one two hour and 40 minute movie than in all the movies from the movies I have seen from the year 2000. M*A*S*H and The Player are the only other two Altman films I have ever seen, and I hesitate to see anymore as how can any of them be as good as NASHVILLE? As for the DVD, the picture was faulty at times, with some scenes very grainy and with a wierd flashing effect. The sound was fine on my dolby pro-logic system.
Rating:
Summary: The Joke's on Us
Review: I have more than a few reservations about NASHVILLE, not least of which is that the idea of a Hollywood filmmaker feeling comfortable in satirizing the glitz of country music is more than a bit galling. Still, overall, I think it's a magnificent movie, almost in spite of itself. I disagree with my fellow reviewers here in only one small, but important way. It is a touch too easy to say that the film is a brilliant satire on America in the 1970s. If the film has any validity at all, it is as a satire on America, period. Sure, the clothes are tacky, the cars ugly, the furniture Sears & Roebuck, but the point is that in 1975 we recognized those qualities just as easily. The film's view of America as a country of over-grown adolescents who refuse to accept responsibility is problably more, not less, true today. After the orgy of denial that was Reaganism and the virtuoso compromises of Clintonism, no one in this country should feel comfortable in condescending to the past. At least in the 1970s we were going through a national soul searching that made films like NASHVILLE possible. Can you imagine a film of equivalent breadth, humor, observation and innovation coming out of today's Hollywood? Fat chance. So, sneer at the past at your own risk.
Rating:
Summary: Paid its dues
Review: This DVD is as superior in picture and sound quality as the video was awful. I wasn't sure that they would release this on DVD, and I was worried about the quality if they did. Well, this DVD is excellant on all counts, especially the re-editing of the 5.1 sound track. Even the newly released CD is very good. The interview with a greying Robert Altman was a nice touch, providing a good history as well as a contemporary view on this controversial (at the time) masterpiece. Anyone who appreciates a well crafted movie, or even those who only prefer 'films', will enjoy this.
Rating:
Summary: Watch this DVD before November 2000
Review: This is a long-waited DVD for many. Though NASHVILLE is considered to be Robert Altman's masterpiece and has influenced generations of filmmakers (Tim Robbins' BOB ROBERTS and CRADLE WILL ROCK, to name the very bests. A typical bad example is MAGNOLIA), it has been unavailable to most of the contemporary audience for years: the VHS and LD were pan-and-scanned, and you can really appreciate the scope of this film only in scope ratio. I saw this legendary film first in 93 when it was re-relased in LA with a Dolby-remastered restored print. I never had the chance to see it since, though I remembered almost every detail of this 160minutes movie for years: this film leaves such a strong impression. I won't try to describe the film itself because you can understand what this is all about ONLY if you ACTUALLY SEE IT. Just one thing: from the point of view of a foreigner who often visits the States, this portrait of American society at the time of the Bicentennial still applies to the American society TODAY, at the beginning of the new millennium, and to any so-called free societies with the political system called democracy. I hope that this DVD will be a bestseller in the states, then it might have some good influence to the presidential election. The DVD looks quite good, recreating the soft patina of the original look as much as possible on the small screen, though it looks a little too dark (so please adjust your video monitor). Altman gives a commentary along the films plus a video interview. The interview sounds more like a summary of what he says on the commentary. It would have been more interesting if Paramount had thought of having other people's voices on the DVD as well. After all, many of the 24 incredible actors who played the leads of this amazing film are still alive. If NASHVILLE is, as Altman repeatedly points out, a collective work, then it's logical, I think, to hear what the cast and crew members has to say.
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