cinema history class: the player

Session: Bring Your Own Movie Month 2018, Week 5
Movie 1: The Player (1992)
Directed by Robert Altman
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A high-powered Hollywood exec is getting threatening postcards. So he kills the guy he thinks is sending them. And shtups the guy's girlfriend for good measure. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
I actually came into this session expecting to not like the movie. But I was pleasantly surprised by a tense, dramatic thriller with humor.

As a group, we had a bit of a lively discussion as to what genre the movie fits in. It's been characterized as a dark comedy, but that doesn't seem quite right. It has elements of film noir -- especially the way the camera is used. But the dialogue never really achieves that staccato nature that I associate with noir. There was some discussion of Hitchcock, and we did agree that this is something that Alfred Hitchcock would have put out -- had he been putting out movies in 1992. Altman himself seems to have thought as much, as he stuck in a sort of Hitchcock cameo.

One of the most notable things about The Player is the cleverness of some of the lines. My favorite is "You took her to a party...with several hundred of my best friends." Another came near the very end of the movie: "You can guarantee me that ending, you got a deal." Out of context, it's not so great. But in the context of the conversation, it was sublime. And, thing is, I didn't even catch the meaning until after the film was over and we were discussing it.

I am left with one question. Are guys, generally speaking, so wierded out by menstruation that they get unnerved by the sight of a policewoman twirling a tampon (an unused tampon, still in its wrapper)?

Ratings:
Me: 9.85
Dave: 10
Ethan: 8
Joe: 8.7*
Keith: 10

*Joe explained his rating as follows: 1 for Whoopi Goldberg, 10 for Tim Robbins, 10 for the struggle of writers, 10 for dialogue, 10 for the ending he was thinking of, 10 for the actual ending and 10 for Hitchcock. He specified that these seven ratings should be equally weighted. Thank God I majored in averages.