Blu-ray Review: Kansas City (1996)

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From the stirring ballads of McCabe and Mrs. Miller to the country yearning of Nashville and soulful blues of Cookie's Fortune, music in the movies of Robert Altman comes in many forms. Complementing the high and low notes sung by his characters — in the vein of the overlapping dialogue that has become an Altman trademark — with his clever use of music to set the dramatic stage, the maverick filmmaker wields sound impressionistically, the way a painter swirls color around a canvas with a brush.

Regularly usurping his film scores, whether it's in the drawing room sing-alongs of Gosford Park or the vaudevillian numbers of A Prairie Home Companion and beyond, Altman uses the public performances of songs to not only create a mood but also transplant us into the heart of each work. Much more than just a single filmmaking tool he has at his disposal, frequently in his oeuvre, music becomes the most important one. Transcending the screen to have as much of an impact on him as it does on us, it informs his subtly ever-changing filmmaking M.O. And nowhere is this approach more evident post-Nashville than in his jazz fueled, forgotten '96 effort Kansas City.

Using jazz's signature improvisational riffs to build its narrative structure, the movie takes a look at vice, music, politics, and corruption over a twenty-four hour period when Missouri is set to hold a consequential 1934 election. While initially it plays like the latest in a long line of Altman's meandering ensemble dramedies, we quickly learn that, although they sound great jamming together, each character we meet in Kansas City doubles as an instrument and all will get their chance to solo.

Anchored by '90s Altman regular Jennifer Jason Leigh as a desperate woman who holds a politician's laudanum addicted wife hostage to secure the release of her hoodlum husband from a jazz club gangster, Kansas City is a crime film that — true to the director's work — is far less interested in plot than it is captivated by its characters.

Performing depression era slang in the hard and fast key of screwball (regardless of the scene's tone), Leigh tries her best to sell lines like "don't try to high-hat me," "park the body, sister," "and put some snap into it" which, when taken cumulatively, land far less than they detract from the goings-on. A Jean Harlowesque Girl From Missouri who's just wild about her man, as intriguing as Leigh's spunky Blondie O’Hara seems to be, we never get a true sense of who she is as a person from one outburst to the next. And although Leigh's Blondie dominates the scenes she shares with her hostage Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson) in the film's first half, she disappears into the chorus once Richardson's increasingly curious victim takes over the bass line later on.

While Kansas City’s women propel forward a majority of the film's plot, the rest of the action is found in the booze soaked, testosterone heavy, smoke and sax filled world of the Hey-Hey Club. A jazz joint located on 18th Street where some of the '90s most talented instrumentalists bring to life the legendary sounds of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins, for a music buff like Altman who grew up listening to blues in Black clubs, City's performances feel like he's stepping back in time to show us the place he calls home.

A dynamic showcase for Harry Belafonte in a daringly against-type role as an underworld gangster who holds court at the Hey-Hey, the actor commands every scene he's in right from the jump. Like a bandleader introducing the musicians keeping the beat behind him, he uses the frame like a microphone and reaches through to tell us exactly what we need to know. From where he sits in the center of the screen, Belafonte reveals, "what's gonna happen at dawn tomorrow going to depend on what happen when the sun go down tonight. You can believe that shit," just as events kick into high gear for Blondie and Carolyn and the music that is Altman's Kansas City starts to play.

Going off on what the director refers to as "jazz riffs" throughout the film where its characters wander away from the plot like a clarinetist backing away from the melody in order to stand up and jam on their own, occasionally the dropped notes and tempo changes distract rather than enhance the musicality of its plot.

Touching on some of his favorite issues like race, class, and gender roles amid the intersection of politics and vice, Kansas City feels like a thematic cousin to his musically minded 1975 masterpiece Nashville. A flawed yet still fascinating opus that rarely comes up in a conversation about the filmmaker's most beloved works that span his fifty year career, Kansas City is additionally dwarfed by the popularity of his other ‘90s output, in the form of the brilliant films Short Cuts and (my personal favorite) The Player.

Seeing it for the first time in twenty-four years however, in this stunningly remastered, special features loaded new Blu-ray from Arrow, Altman's movie proves itself not only worthy of a second look but a second listen as well. Filled with scene-stealing soloists like Leigh, Richardson, Belafonte, and Steve Buscemi ready to grab their trumpets and blow, Kansas City is a vital reminder that nothing — absolutely nothing — sounds quite like an Altman led band playing in 4x4 time.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

TV on DVD: Tracey Takes on... (The Complete Final Seasons)

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View Video Clips of Ullman's State of the Union

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Since Kay Clark-- the British bank teller who moved to California in order to become the caretaker of her invalid mother-- was acknowledged legally and due to copyright reasons as the only character wholeheartedly created by the show's star, it's Kay who made the lonely leap from FOX Network's The Tracey Ullman Show to HBO's eight time Emmy award winning smash Tracey Takes on...for its four season run.

Rounding out the rest of the series, the talented, diverse comical actress, singer, dancer, and chameleon-like force of nature that is Tracey Ullman-- along with her gifted writers-- crafted a roster comprised of eighteen primary and countless secondary main characters and this time without the limits of censorship and free from corporate sponsors, they relished in the freedom to go to the extreme in some truly daring sketches.

While E.R. was widely praised as the first narrative and solidly structured show that successfully juggled several plotlines in any given episode to make it suitable for those of the channel changer generation-- Tracey Takes On... essentially worked the same way.

However, unlike Saturday Night Live which kind of stayed current and then dumped a skit to run with whatever was next, Ullman revisited not just frumpy caregiver Kay Clark-- who teams up with Cheech Marin to experiment with marijuana to try and give her mom some pain relief only to test it out herself first-- but other characters' storylines that didn't always end with a comedic zing but an internal chuckle, picking up the narrative thread she dropped later on in the strangest of ways when her many characters found their lives colliding. Sometimes the humor is abandoned completely in favor of pathos or melancholy or getting a point across that she'll use later (for the sake of wit) down the road as the shows meander (mostly) in and around the two coasts of the United States.

Often inspired by those she's come into contact with working in La La Land like one of her early Hollywood agents blended together with the Menendez Brothers lawyer for the downright hideous character of attorney Sydney Kross who can bully death row inmates into doing what she wants or a real life cab driver named Chic-- Tracey Takes on... is loosely strung together by a given topic from "Loss," to "Agents" to "Dating," which she manages to skewer in the most intriguing of ways.

She does so by first opening with an interview styled confessional anecdote as Tracey Ullman herself-- in person and out of makeup, wigs, and fake teeth-- shares a story about each one before she tackles the subjects and all the possible meanings they could incorporate which definitely goes beyond what most of us would probably first come up with in an average game of Password, Scattergories or Taboo.

Although, watching this show just months after viewing the much more recent and vastly superior first season of Showtime's Tracey Ullman's State of the Union Season One (also released by Eagle Rock Entertainment) makes Tracey Takes on... seem noticeably dated and also far less vital than the comedy from State of the Union since in between her impressions of Dina Lohan and Helen Mirren on the latter, she managed to address some of the issues facing our globe but this aside, Tracey Takes on... is still impressive.

While unfortunately, I do have to admit that more than half of her characters were unlikable in this particular show and her impression of the Asian-American character Mrs. Noh Nang Ning struck me on the same cringe-worthy level as Mickey Rooney's in Breakfast at Tiffany's--and I do wonder if she would've made this decision today-- it's still a solid work of entertainment.

And this is mostly due to the extraordinary gifts of our leading lady for not just her incredible versatility but also the way she's able to move right into the demands of any given skit from portraying an Australian stunt woman whose dwarf husband had died, taking part in a rigorous Fosse like dance routine, singing her heart out, and then reenacting the finale of Titanic with Psych's Corbin Bernsen.

Although when it comes to Ullman, I'm still going to tune into her particular State of the Union far more often than Tracey Takes on... despite some great guest work and funny turns by a game Jennifer Jason Leigh and Helen Mirren just to name two-- it's enjoyable for fans of the comical actress who (much like this reviewer) have also relished her turns in the movies of Woody Allen and her willingness to take risks in offbeat projects like Nancy Savoca's Household Saints and Lawrence Kasdan's masterful I Love You to Death as well.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Blu-ray Review: The Machinist (2004)

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A.K.A. El Maquinista

All Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) wants to do is sleep.

Having been plagued with horrific insomnia for a year—although told much like Edward Norton’s main character in David Fincher’s Fight Club that the loss of sleep won’t cause him death—Reznik is a walking zombie.

Moving in that endless state which finds everyday bleeding into the next one, Reznik fears his eyes have begun to play tricks on him as they’re understandably unable focus or adjust to light and dark that’s enhanced by director Brad Anderson’s bleak visual design.



And by bleaching out the color on the film print the way that the obsessive compulsive machine shop worker Reznik endlessly washes his hands and minimalist apartment with bleach augments screenwriter Scott Kosar’s incredibly ambitious symbolism filled screenplay to masterfully eerie effect.

On the surface, there's initially Reznik’s name which is indicative of “butcher" (its meaning in Czech) which adds yet another subtext to the character’s position working in a machine shop where his fatigue results in a near fatal accident that costs an employee an arm. And of course, when you add Trevor to Reznik in Kosar's homage to Nine Inch Nails musician Trent Reznor, you know you're dealing with something instantly off center.

Yet, tactfully Anderson avoided a particular heavy metal style or anything too overt in his execution of Kosar’s work that from the first page and/or frame easily hearkens to the obvious influences of Kafka, Dosteovsky, Freud, and existentialism.

And once again, Bale loses himself in the production dropping a frightening sixty-three pounds to play the emaciated visibly skeletal haunted worker who plies his trade in an anonymous factory called National.



However, there’s much about Reznik we don’t quite understand--especially considering the structurally issue that the quiet and damn near comatose character interacts sincerely with only two people throughout including Jennifer Jason Leigh’s concerned, compassionate call girl Stevie and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon’s sympathetic airport diner waitress. Despite this, we as well as Reznik are quick to understand that there’s much more to his insomnia and rapid weight loss than he realizes.



Dropping endless red herrings and-- filled with dialogue, symbols, and elements that don’t fully become welded together until the devastating conclusion that answers our questions in a sequence of pure wonder—it’s a tough film to view to say the least but one that necessitates a second viewing soon after its finished.

As, just like a nightmare—the kind most of us have while we’re asleep but Reznik has when he’s awake—we’re not sure who or what is lurking around each corner as Reznik’s paranoia increases when he meets a mysterious new coworker Ivan (John Sharian) who behaves strangely, seemingly follows Reznik, yet is also one no one else in the film acknowledges.



Not quite film noir and not quite Hitchcockian although elements of the nicely balanced Roque Banos theremin-heavy score seem like they would’ve been a natural choice made by the master of suspense, The Machinist nonetheless manages to immerse you completely into its macabre labyrinth of mania.



No-- maddeningly and making it all the more a work of pure intellectual wonder-- it never lets us in on what exactly it is that the employees make in that peculiar machine shop let alone the city in which it takes place. For although it certainly seems like its Los Angeles—The Machinist was filmed in Barcelona out of necessity (as no American company would back the strange film) and made to appear like a generic metropolis.

With a distinct visual style—Anderson’s movie is increasingly striking on Blu-ray as that curious work that seems to have adopted the same Spanish signatures of directors working throughout Latin American cinema in crafting a highly literary and worthwhile urban dreamscape of existential hell.



In a transfer filled with crisp precision, in my most recent viewing of The Machinist, I was immediately aware of the astute choices made throughout that's been enhanced in high definition from the noticeably bleached out color scheme and bravery in only using sound when absolutely necessary whether it’s to heighten a key line that will double back or the sound of a car or clock that fits into the finale.

Containing Anderson’s directorial commentary track as well as deleted scenes, the theatrical trailer, the Blu-ray also offers the standard definition featurette The Machinist: Breaking the Rules in which Bale admits that despite others reluctance or question as to just what the hell the movie was about, he committed to the vision, knowing it was the type of movie he’d want to see.



However, it also luckily surpasses some of the other recent studio offerings by delivering two worthwhile extras into elevated to HD including Manifesting the Machinist which chronicles the origin of Kosar’s story conceived while a student at a UCLA evening class as a horrific version of The Odyssey as well as the fight for financing and interest and my personal favorite The Machinist: Hiding in Plain Sight which introduces you to all of the symbolism used throughout from the visuals to the dialogue.

Of course, it’s this type of “cheat sheet” extra that devotees will want to jump to first but as Anderson smartly reveals—although of course those who’ve seen the film realize that the puzzle is finally solved by the closing credits in regards to just what’s happening to the sleep deprived Reznik—the film manages to hold our interest on a far eerier level by ensuring that not everything is presented as a final, “cut and dried" a.k.a. "here’s how it all happened" conclusion.



Challenging and ingenious, moving well past the popular gimmicks of other twist ending, “can we trust our narrator?” pieces that swarmed into theatres following Singer’s Usual Suspects and Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense up through Bale’s Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more—The Machinist still holds up well as the type of film that does indeed work like a Kafka or even Stranger like Camus novella.

Invading the comfort zone of your mind for one hundred and four minutes, you’ll be surprised just how long The Machinist lingers there afterward… much like a good book or that type of dream you have that you can’t quite recall but know deep down felt more like a nightmare even if you can't explain it.