A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

Movie #59



Wow, I’m doing pretty good this year… last year I only cracked 66 movies in the theater, and here it is only mid-September and I’m about to hit 60. If that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is.

Thanks to the Logan Budget theater and my strong desire not to study, I went to catch a screening of this film. I try to see all of Altman’s work in the cinema – even when he doesn’t exactly nail it, the end product is always interesting. I enjoyed this movie even though it was not exactly earth-shattering. Probably the biggest problem I had was the fact that it’s mainly a filmed stage show, and I have an aversion to movies that resemble a play in any way. There were enough story lines and interweaving characters to keep it moving along though, and I loved Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as Dusty and Lefty. I was pretty ambivalent about the role of the Angel played by Virginia Madsen (although an angel in a trenchcoat is a nice nod to one of my favorites, Wings of Desire).

That’s about all I can think of at the moment. I did find the ending to be rather sad, and want to ask other people about how they interpreted it (but without spoilers here).