Popular reviews

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  Review by kársten ★★★★½

  manifesting elliott gould in the next safdie brothers film. this is just fantastic

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  Review by Adam Friedland 3

  This is how I win

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★ 4

  The more blind spots I fill the more I am convinced that Robert Altman was the greatest director of the 1970s, a filmmaker who in the moment churned out on an annual basis the kind of brutally observant, precisely shambolic takedown of the decade that has only recently been matched by Inherent Vice. Though far more comic than McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville or The Long Goodbye, California Split is no less bleak in its assessment of post-'60s malaise and accelerating greed as a total social collapse. Elliott Gould is dynamic and hilarious as roving hustler Charlie, a whirling dervish who projects the confidence of a con-man but lacks the follow-through to actually succeed at any game for longer than a…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 5

  85

  "Goddamnit, lady, you don't throw oranges on an escalator!"

  What George Segal and Elliot Gould create together in California Split is so beautiful. How they exist in their own worlds but they still seem eager to live vicariously together. Two lost souls moving around a shared orbit. Laughing as the ship sinks, their self-destruction always in freefall. The narrative is functional - mere stepping stones to delay the inevitable. Robert Altman fills up smoky, well-worn spaces and sets it loose with great actors and drunken energy. What a picture!

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  Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★ 1

  love to hear a whole theater gasp at a 21 year old Jeff Goldblum

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  Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★ 5

  There’s no experience that quite equates with watching a Robert Altman movie.

  I find them completely mesmerizing. His overlapping sound design and jumping around between conversations make you feel like these characters are just kinda walking through your life for two hours, instead of getting into their heads. It’s immersive, hypnotizing and beautiful to watch. The experience and vibe is what makes him my favorite director of all time.

  This movie was probably the least organized of the films of his I’ve seen but I love his style so much I didn’t care. I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re just starting out on his work but if you’re a fan, it’s a great deep cut.

  Elliott Gould doesn’t give a…

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  Review by DallasFrance ★★★★½ 10

  Elliot Gould is just on 🔥🔥🔥 in this film. He was a wind-up toy that Altman twisted and let loose at the beginnings of Mash, The Long Goodbye, and California Split. Charlie propels himself from one poker table to the next by wind power created from his constant chatter. It doesn’t matter if he’s talking to Bill (George Segal), a random old lady at the racetrack, or a taxidermed trophy at the Reno casino. 

  Bill (George Segal) tries to draft off Charlie’s charisma, energy, and ability to race above it all. In Charlie’s world, the ramifications of dry spells, debts, and dubious deals don’t feel like a concern. But Bill isn’t Charlie, and when there is just one moment of quiet, when even Charlie can’t fill the dead air, there has to be a reckoning. You can only live in someone else’s world for so long before you have to re-enter your own.

  
  Altman Ranked

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  Review by laird ★★★★½ 1

  the odds couple

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★ 2

  One pattern I need to start looking out for in Altman's films is the disguised or subverted happy ending, the final scenes that give the audience at least a part of what they think they want, but in a way that's twisted into melancholy. California Split might be the ultimate in this idea, giving us in the audience the vicarious thrill of a an exciting night of gambling, but the focus is totally different from what it would be in a conventional film. Gambling is an eminently cinematic activity, giving clear emotional stakes to clean, fundamental onscreen action, but Altman is markedly uninterested in the false drama and statistical impossibilities of movie poker. Instead, he keeps his camera on the…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  getting out ahead is a pyrrhic victory.

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★

  I think I’m going to get into gambling

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  Review by Branson Reese

  Beautiful very funny movie that is -like much great art- secretly about my alcoholism.

  “Why don’t you go home?”
  “Sure, where do you live?”