Rating: 
Summary: A Great Western, A Great Deconstruction, A Great Film
Review: This is one of my favorite Altman films (Vincent & Theo, The Player, The Long Good-Bye, and Short Cuts round out the top 5). He takes the Western--a great American genre, but an oft-hackneyed one--and injects new blood into its withered old veins. Gone are the trademarks of the old Western, many of which simply transplanted bourgeoise America onto the Plains: the setting is cold, wet, snowy, green and mountainous as much of the west was and is--not flat, dry, still and khaki-colored; the dialogue is common, vulgar and overlapping--not genteel and well-schooled; the people are crude, dirty and uneducated--not clean and prim; the hero is not a hero at all, not brave and skilled at gunplay--in fact, not everyone owns a gun; etc. etc. etc. Altman recreates the Western in this brilliant tale of greed, cowardice, power, cruelty, progress, and the calculus of addiction. Warren Beatty, Julie Christy and the rest of the cast are outstanding.
Rating:
Summary: Sublime
Review: One of my favorite films of all-time, Robert Altman's best, and perhaps Warren Beatty's best.As others have said, this film explores the dark, realist side of the American West. However, unlike other anti-Westerns of the era like The Wild Bunch, it does so in a hauntingly beautiful, even lyrical (albeit melancholic) way, augmented by Leonard Cohen's perfectly matched songs and the atmospheric cinematography. There are the usual Western archetypes and themes - the gunslinger, the [prostitute], the church (symbolizing redemption and civilization), etc. - but Altman turns them upside-down. The would-be hero is an insecure bumbler who lets the whore get under his skin and dies, unceremoniously, in a snowbank. There is no honor among the thieves - they shoot people for no particular reason. The church burns. And, unlike most Westerns, the film is set not in the desert, but in the foggy Pacific Northwest, adding to the murky, morally ambiguous atmosphere, which is further enhanced by the occasionally inaudible dialogue. This understated film has none of the overwrought archness of Altman's later work, so those who have been put off by same (as I have) need not worry - these are not merely clever celebrity cameos, but characters who live and breathe and make us care about what happens to them. The film is sombre but has many naturally comic moments (thanks to Beatty's usual bumbling loverboy persona) and is never merely studied or self-important. Similarly, for those who might be skeptical, Cohen's music is his earliest, most affecting, and least pompous. I have a very sensitive BS meter and it never buzzes during this remarkably beautiful and affecting movie. For those who really care about film, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Much Plot, but Strong Documentary Feel
Review: Robert Altman's meandering, "we'll put it together in editing" directorial style lends an air of documentarian authenticity to this grim western, set in a snow-covered northwest mining town peopled by an aimless mob of mostly European immigrants. With no heroes to speak of, the film chronicles the downfall of an ambitious, if inept, entrepreneur (Warren Beatty) and his drug-addled prostitute partner (Julie Christie). Less about living than about survival, the film not surprisingly offers little in the way of plot, but it's nihilistic themes ring true with the moody acting of its leads and the dusty, sepia tones of its imagery. A particularly ironic moment of social commentary occurs when, after helping the town's whites save their church from a fire, an African-American couple just wanders away from the resulting celebration quietly, knowing they are no longer welcome. Leonard Cohen--less gravelly than usual but as hopeless as the guy with the guitar in "Operation Petticoat"--provides the soundtrack with a patina of sadness common to films of the early 70s.
Rating:
Summary: McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Review: In the opening shots of Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," we follow John McCabe (Warren Beatty) making his way on horseback through the hills of the Pacific Northwest. As the camera shifts to the side, it picks up the credits, hanging in the rain-soaked air. "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, delights with beautiful plush cinematography.
John McCabe,a determined businessman with a mysterious past, settles in Presbyterian Church, a small Northwestern town, and opens up a saloon and a brothel. Soon after Constance Miller (Julie Christie) arrives and strikes a deal with McCabe to manage the brothel. McCabe loves Mrs. Miller and gives in to most of her wishes, she however uses opium and it's unclear how much she feels for McCabe. The money and power mining folks want to buy out McCabe's holdings in town and he bargains too long foolishly imagining the cards he was holding to be alot better than they were. The Mining company sends their killers and McCabe deals with them as the church burns and snow falls.
In The New York Times Magazine, Aljean Harmetz wrote of Robert Altman's films: "He wants to catch the accidents of life and fling them on the screen hard enough to knock the breath out of the audience. He wants to weigh the screen down with vulgarity, pleasure, pain, ugliness, and unexpected beauty". In " McCabe and Mrs. Miller" Altman has painted with these very brush strokes a still, quiet masterpiece
Possibly the greatest western ever made, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" could be the most authentic presentation of frontier life ever filmed. If you get the feeling that the film is not about any one thing, it's because it's about everything.
Rating:
Summary: A True Film Classic
Review: I have been waiting for years for a DVD version of Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs.Miller" to come out.This is my all time favorite western (or should I say anti-western).It is a anti-western because there are no heroic John Wayne types in ten gallon hats.Instead we are shown a weary frontier world populated by immigrants who are trying to eek out an existence. The film is about an itinerant gambler named McCabe (well played by Warren Beatty) who comes to a muddy, primitive, frontier mining town with the ideal of getting into the business of supplying the local miners with whiskey and women.He is soon approached by Mrs.Miller (a hard as nails prostitute played by Julie Christie) to go into a partnership to build a proper bordello.She supplies the women and the management, while he supplies the house.All goes well until McCabe is approached by a large mining corporation to buy out his holdings.When negotiations break down, the corporation sends a murderous posse.This film is arguably Robert Altman's masterpiece.The story is something you might hear by a midnight campfire. There are no real heroes, yet these characters keep you infinitly interested.Beatty and Christie are brilliant in the lead roles, playing two very flawed people, who have nobody to blame but themselves for their downfall.The supporting cast is excellent giving the viewer possibly a dozen other mini stories in the background.The cinematography in this movie is beautiful as it shows this drama being played out in the warm amber glow of gas lamps and fireplaces. The soundtrack to this movie is packed with the wonderful music of singer-songwriter Lenard Cohen. His world weary voice perfectly matches the film's dirty, frontier town and its inhabitants.The DVD to this film supplies extras which includes Robert Altman's commentary, a short documentry and a trailer.The dialogue track to this movie has always been somewhat muddy and indistinct.It was a real joy to be able to use the DVD's subtitles feature to figure out the content of many of the background conversations.I love this movie and I have seen it multiple times over the years.It is a beautiful but haunting film which stays with you long after its over.
Rating:
Summary: One of the BEST Films Ever Made
Review: McCabe and Mrs. Miller is yet another brillant work from Robert Altman who along with Scorsese ranks as the two greatest filmmakers America has produced. Next to "Nashville", this is Altman's best film. One of Altman's devices is to take an established genre of filmmaking and turn it completely inside out and reexamine it. Here, Altman has made a Western (or is is an Anti-Western)like no other. This neither looks nor feels like any other film I've seen. Warren Beatty gives the performance of his career here(you would'nt know he and Altman were at odds the entire shoot) and I will forever remember the lovely Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller, the tough talking shrewd and business smart prostitute. Altman's sensational style of filmmaking perfectly suits the material, his remarkable use of overlapping dialogue demands multiple viewings, and Vilmos Zsigmond's incredible, ususual cinematography is endlessly fascinating to look at. And ,as with most of Altman's work, one can interpet the film a number of ways. Is it a tough look at achieving the American Dream, or is it a study of American frontierism/individualism vs. community/democracy? Is it (as one previous reviewer commented)an indictment of Capitalism and a look at the way Big Business encroached on the frontier and a simple way of life. Is it a study of loneliness and heroism? The answer is yes to all of these. To top it off, Altman's use of Leonard Cohen's songs to accompany the film adds to the overall sense of melancholy, it fits it beautifully. If I sound like I'm gushing, I am, great films have that effect. See this now!
Rating:
Summary: McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Review: This is, I think, my favorite film of all time. It has everything: romance, comedy, suspense, gangsters, and the most archetypal of all American movie symbols, the Western shoot-out. And it's real. You are not watching actors reciting lines in a script; you are watching the first thousand people or so forging an American community. You are watching the town you grew up in when it was a seed.
It puzzles as much as reveals: just what is Constance Miller feeling for McCabe? McCabe for sure loves her a lot, enough to humble himself and pay money for sex. Would she ever do the same for him? Why is saving the church cause for jubilation among the townsfolk when apparently none of them felt connected at all to it? And my favorite puzzle of all: how on earth did Pudgy McCabe get the reputation of a fearsome gunslinger?
The first puzzle doesn't interest me very much. It's one of those character things that's often good to leave in limbo. But the second and third puzzles speak to the heart of the United States, for I think they have definitive answers in terms of what Altman was saying with this film.
As for the saving of the church: the rampant lack of real spiritual feeling among Americans is laid bare, for while the church is being saved, McCabe is being stalked. Americans don't put into practice those churchly ideas that they all claim to stand for, while at the same time they give their all to protect the symbol of the idea they are neglecting. You get to know these townsfolk intimately during the film, and you really like them. It's not as if they were evil, but Christian ideals are just words to them, as they are to many Christians today. How else to explain the rabid Christian right's war-mongering image over the years?
The third puzzle explodes the American myth of the Western hero. Pudgy McCabe, the feared gunslinger, turns out to be a bumbling character who shot a man with a derringer. Hardly Billy the Kid (who was hardly Billy the Kid either), but some of the stories circulating about Pudgy McCabe are ones of mythic proportions. The tall bounty hunter is wrong when he says, "That man never killed anybody." Americans will make their heroes out of lies if need be. The circulated story becomes the truth, and the truth becomes a lie. I believe Altman was speaking not simply of Western heroes, but American heroes in general. They are stories only. How else to explain Jessica Lynch and almost all of the politicians who crawl around in Washington, D.C.? We approve stories over truth, we approve symbols over substance. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a damning indictment of the American heart, showing us up for our lack of spiritual depth.
Also, the novel McCabe, by Edmund Naughton, is interesting to read if you are a fan of the Altman film.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Western, A Great Deconstruction, A Great Film
Review: This is one of my favorite Altman films (Vincent & Theo, The Player, The Long Good-Bye, and Short Cuts round out the top 5). He takes the Western--a great American genre, but an oft-hackneyed one--and injects new blood into its withered old veins. Gone are the trademarks of the old Western, many of which simply transplanted bourgeoise America onto the Plains: the setting is cold, wet, snowy, green and mountainous as much of the west was and is--not flat, dry, still and khaki-colored; the dialogue is common, vulgar and overlapping--not genteel and well-schooled; the people are crude, dirty and uneducated--not clean and prim; the hero is not a hero at all, not brave and skilled at gunplay--in fact, not everyone owns a gun; etc. etc. etc. Altman recreates the Western in this brilliant tale of greed, cowardice, power, cruelty, progress, and the calculus of addiction. Warren Beatty, Julie Christy and the rest of the cast are outstanding.
Rating:
Summary: McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Review: I've got to admit I'm a little surprised to read the negative critiques of McCABE & MRS. MILLER here. In my opinion this is one of the five greatest movies ever, in any genre, and I'm not an Altman fan. Anyway, here's my response to some of the criticism.
This film has too much realism - I watched the movie with the audio commentary by Robert Altman and producer David Foster (which is good, as far as those things go), and the short documentary on the making of McCABE & MRS. MILLER, which I believe was made shortly after the movie. The realism, in my opinion, is what gives this movie depth and texture. The town was being built while the movie was being shot (the film was shot in sequence), and the buildings are not facades. They are real buildings. Interior shots were done in them and not in studio. It's pointless, boring and pretentious - I think because Altman focuses so much on characters and their motivations the viewer may miss the plot. The plot here is pretty simple - At the turn of the last century a man builds a gambling/whore house in a small mining town. An astute madam joins him and in short order the venture is a success. Such a success, in fact, that an outside concern wants to buy him out. Two men are sent to the small town to negotiate with him, and he drunkenly refuses their offer. They leave and the outside concern takes the next step, which is to employ three hired killers to do away with McCabe.
I suppose letting characters evolve and refraining from throwing plot points at us can seem pretentious. To me, it simply felt like the director wasn't talking down to me. Altman says somewhere in the voice over that movies are canvases to him, and he likes working in the corners. That's not everybody's cup of tea.
And the ending.... Well, it ain't supposed to end like that, and even those of us who love the movie wish it had ended on a more positive note. We wish it only because we've become involved with the characters. But, if it had ended differently, if Mrs. Miller hadn't made that midnight run to Chinatown, we probably wouldn't be talking about it 30+ years on. Dismal story, dismal photography - Altman speaks some about the "look" of the movie. The cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, "flashed" the negatives to give it a daguerreotype feel. Flashing a negative is briefly exposing it to light before developing it. I hadn't noticed until I rewatched it the other day how the look changes after the pivot point - the failed negotiations. Before that the film looks warm and soft-focused, after that it acquires a harsh, white, sharp-focused look. The look, from set design to photography, is perfect. McCABE & MRS. MILLER killed the genre - That's kind of like saying Pete Rose destroyed baseball. I'm a huge fan of Westerns, from Gene Autry to John Wayne to Clint Eastwood and all stops in between, and I think this fits comfortably in the genre. I certainly think McCabe's response to the threat at the end of the film is truer to reality than most. When you got skilled bad guys tracking you, you hide in the corner and shot them in the back if you get the chance.
Rating:
Summary: Not Much Plot, but Strong Documentary Feel
Review: Robert Altman's meandering, "we'll put it together in editing" directorial style lends an air of documentarian authenticity to this grim western, set in a snow-covered northwest mining town peopled by an aimless mob of mostly European immigrants. With no heroes to speak of, the film chronicles the downfall of an ambitious, if inept, entrepreneur (Warren Beatty) and his drug-addled prostitute partner (Julie Christie). Less about living than about survival, the film not surprisingly offers little in the way of plot, but it's nihilistic themes ring true with the moody acting of its leads and the dusty, sepia tones of its imagery. A particularly ironic moment of social commentary occurs when, after helping the town's whites save their church from a fire, an African-American couple just wanders away from the resulting celebration quietly, knowing they are no longer welcome. Leonard Cohen--less gravelly than usual but as hopeless as the guy with the guitar in "Operation Petticoat"--provides the soundtrack with a patina of sadness common to films of the early 70s.
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