BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

broggoethe I have a list of about 10 of these older sci-fi movies of which I have seen 2 or 3, A Boy and His Dog and The City of Lost Children that I want to watch in the next week or so. I can't believe Paul Newman could stoop so low as to involve himself in this drek. He needed money? This is a movie that should never have been made (how embarrassing for Paul) and more importantly, should not be watched.

mrnunleygo Someone has to say it: the emperor is wearing no clothes. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Robert Altman, who directed at least dozen films I greatly admire, including two of my all-time favorites. To me, the willingness to take artistic risks, fall on one's face, then get up and try again, is a sign of creative courage and is to be respected. But this doesn't mean we have to applaud the failures. Maybe it seemed like a good idea on paper: let's represent the cruelty, absurdity and meaninglessness of life with an isolated, post-apocalyptic group of people who addictively play a board game (never described, but apparently requiring no skill) while awaiting their inevitable deaths. As a concept, this might seem attractive, envisioned as a science fiction epic that combined the best of Kubrick and Bergman. The resulting movie, however, is quite simply a disaster. "Quintet" is talky, jejune, visually static, humorless, repetitive, emotionally distant, without suspense, confusing, and most conspicuously, boring. It must be one of the least engrossing movies I've ever watched. Even with a distinguished international cast, there isn't one character with any depth—which means no character to give a flying "f" about (and this from a director who in other films brought dozens of characters to life with minimal dialogue and limited screen time). The dreamy, grease-limned cinematography is more annoying than evocative. The existential sophistication is that of a 12-year-old who just figured out we're all going to die—or maybe Altman had one of those moments when he was high on drugs and thought the insight he'd just had was profound, but forgot to sleep it off. "We didn't ask to be here." (Whoa! Deep, man.) I concede there are a couple of visually striking images amid the endless shots of people in big coats walking to their next scenes (though oddly, they don't ever look cold), and the music is interesting, if a bit overwrought given the banality of the events being portrayed. Neither virtue is enough for me to elevate this film to a "2" rating. Honestly, people, there have to be 20 better Altman movies you should watch before you try to suffer through this one. I can only hope one day a secret diary is found that shows Altman was punking us to win a bet that he could get some people to watch anything.

chaos-rampant Bookended by figures emerging and dissolving into a frozen wasteland and taking place in a bleak, hopeless near future where society presumably collapsed under the weight of some nameless disaster that left a world covered in ice and a number of survivors trying to survive on it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Quintet is some kind of dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller. Not only it's not that but it's not really a fully fledged movie as much as a feature length essay on the basic philosophic idea that life can only be fully appreciated under the shadow of death, with a plot deliberately shaped as a chess game and dialogues often as wooden and posturized as something taken out of a Samuel Beckett play.I don't know what came first, the script or the location the movie was shot, a jambled mess of art installations forming the Man and His World Pavilion on St. Helen's Island, Montreal, originally built for the Expo 67 and left standing for years after. The first half hour can be a jarring experience, asking the viewer not only to abandon all familiar semiotics and landmarks one uses to navigate through a filmic universe much like real life and accept in their stead a convoluted world seen through an annoyingly soft focused lens (no doubt slapped with vaseline on the edges of the frame) where booze for some reason is called booza, people wear old Venezian hats and use a needlessly complicated information center made of revolving glass leaves, but to consider this cardboard version of the future within some realistic context. Which is nearly impossible given the absurdity of the plot and appears as an afterthought to give some additional credibility and dimension to what Altman is really going for. His little essay.The hopeless denizens of this bleak future spend their time playing a game called Quintet. Only the more foolhardy among them seem to have taken the game on the next level by organizing little tournaments of Quintet in real life. Paul Newman finds himself involved in one of them after his brother and pregnant girl are blown to bits by one of the participants. He then sleepwalks his way through two hours of cat-and-mouse absurdity peppered with philosophical rhetorics to finally receive a halfhearted explanation by the Judge of the game (an amicable fellow speaking in a heavy Italian accent played by Ferdinando Rey). An explanation which is ultimately weakened because the Judge had already revealed it 30 minutes ago - in his little talk about the point of the game, which is all that really matters here. No character is developed more than a pawn in a boarding game, not even Newman the protagonist, curiously wooden and uninterested in what's going on around him, although Ferdinando Rey seems to be enjoying the hell out of his role.Once you get past the slow start the film develops into a peculiarly riveting murder mystery but it never quite makes the cut as something genuinely inspired. Some of the ideas and themes explored are truly interesting, as for example the notion that it's the markers one carries that determine his identity, something he acquires or even steals (as does Newman who pretends to be Redstone by using his markers in order to take part in the Quintet game and discover who killed his brother) instead of being born with it, the five stages in life attended on all sides by the nothingness of death as explained by St. Christopher to his disciples, or perhaps even more so the idea of a judge tired of judging, wishfully ruminating how he would like for once to take part in the game instead of watch it unfold, perhaps follow the rules instead of interpret them.Obviously Quintet is not among Altman's best and if you'll get anything out of it or not largely depends on what level you're willing to engage it. As a dramatic work, it's undoubtedly a failure. On a dialectical level, as an essay of mostly philosophical nature, it's not bad at all.

Gloede_The_Saint (Only minor spoilers) Offbeat oddity director Robert Altman returns to the screen with yet another non-commercial and highly artistic film. Having gone through a Altman kick in the last couple of days I have found many hidden pieces of gold and this is one of them! The story is set in the future and we follows Essex and his wife Vivia who are on their way into a town where Essex used to live. We're somewhere with loads of ice and we're apparently close to human extinction. As a result the humans have become a cold breed and they all seem to be occupied with this game called Quintet. Altman apparently invented the game in complete form only to use it in this film. now that shows commitment. In the city Essex witness a horrible event which drags him into this game but with an rather interesting twist. The film is incredibly well shot and structured and the acting is as you should expect great! We're talking about Newman, Rey and Andersson here so what else is it to expect. One thing this film manages is to create a mood I have not seen in an other film, sure it's a little close to the one used in McCabe and Mrs. Miller but more like the Norwegian action film Ofelas.Everything about this film is odd. It mixes about every emotion possible and leaves this weird feeling in your stomach. Altman went all the way with this picture, he both reinvented styles used in silent cinema and tried out some new stuff.This is a film you should definitely get a hold of. Especially if your looking for something out of the ordinary while it's also being fairly on the point, straight forward and using a somewhat classical yet offbeat style. An odd but rewarding experience.