Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

hrkepler 'Images' ranks at the very top of the films about (female) madness along with Ingmar Bergman's 'Persona' and Roman Polanski's 'Repulsion'. Perhaps inferior to 'Persona' in most aspects, Altman's 'Images' is still hauntingly interesting film with amazingly dedicated performance from lead actress Susannah York who is nearly in every scene of the movie. The haunting and eerie score by John Williams complimented with percussion sounds by Stomu Yamashta over magnificent cinematography by visionary Vilmos Zsigmond alone is the reason to watch the film because it is fantastic visual treat.The film follows children's author Cathryn who receives disturbing phone call that suggests that her husband is having an affair. After that, Cathryn tries to cope with her own sins and inner demons until she loses the boundaries between reality and imagination. The film has eerie surreal atmosphere so the story and events are confusing so it is easy to loose track as a viewer as much as the protagonist is confused. Although the film feels like some twisted meditation, the story line is actually coherent and seemingly out of place details fall into right place by the end.Visually magnificent film with powerful and layered performance by Susannah York. 'Images' is recommended for the fans of psychological horror and thriller. Definitely much more than just an art house horror experiment.

tieman64 Robert Altman's generally thought of as a weak visualist, his films messy, shapeless and dialogue driven. This is not quite true. And even if it were, there has always been another side to Altman; films like "3 Women" and "Images" single him out as a strong surrealist, adept and spooky imagery and menacing atmosphere. Indeed, "Images" sometimes seems like it was ghost directed by Roman Polanski or Luis Bunuel.The plot? Cathryn and her husband Hugh spend a few days in a spooky country house. She suffers from delusional disorder, "images of past lovers" spontaneously popping into her head. Like Altman's "3 Women", there are hints of temporal displacement, characters merging and occupying the same spaces or conversing with little girls who may or may not be their own younger selves.Is Cathryn crazy? Are supernatural forces at work? Is her mind being consumed by guilt? Why not all three? Cathryn seems to have had an adulterous affair with a French man called Rene. He died in a plane crash but returns as an "image" to haunt her. Meanwhile, Cathryn's infidelity is personified as Marcel, a large brute of a man who constantly tries to force himself upon her. Meanwhile Marcel's wife, an unseen character who we know had affairs, has divorced him, but not before having a young child, a girl who is herself the splitting image of Cathryn.Continuing with the theme of images, Cathryn's husband is a photographer whilst she is an author. The film's soundtrack often consists of Cathryn narrating one of her books, the audience forced to conjure up images to the words she reads.So what are we to make of this? Cathryn and her husband are image-makers. Cathryn, because of her overactive imagination, imagines that her husband is having an affair. These thoughts, fuelled by her own past infidelities, attack her as "images". In order to restore her sanity, Cathryn thus murders her "image" of Rene and her "image" of Marcel. Finally cured, she drives to her husband before encountering an "image" of herself on the road. The implication is that Cathryn must now destroy her "image", confronting the paranoid source of these monsters. And so Cathryn pushes her own "image" off a cliff. With this symbolic suicide, she is now free. But we then learn that the final "image" was not a self-image at all. It was her husband whom Cathryn encountered and murdered on the road. And so the film ends with a reversal of the classic Hitchcock shower scene. Cathryn faces a deadly "image" of herself; she is the monster, her delusions fragments of her own warped persona.Altman hints at this by naming his 5 characters after the actors who play them. They're not only "images", but "composite images". Marcel Bozzuffi plays "Rene", but "Rene" is the name of actor Rene Auberjonois who plays "Hugh", "Hugh" being the first name of Hugh Millais, the actor who plays "Marcel". Similarly, Susannah York plays "Cathryn", whilst the actress Cathryn Harrison plays a "Susannah".8/10 – Eerily similar to "3 Women", this is essentially an art house thriller. The film seems to have inspired the end of Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", in which Travis Bickle famously sees himself in his car's rear view mirror. Altman's female psycho does this as well, complete with that familiar little audio zing.

mario_c It's a great psychological thriller by Robert Altman. The plot is about a schizophrenic woman that struggles against herself to kill "images" in her mind of things and people she doesn't want to remember. She's a writer and she does books for kids but in the story she imagined, about an enchanted forest and the search for Unicorn, she has the main role... It's a story that only exists in her mind but has terrible consequences in real life...This movie is quite surrealistic and the dementia of the main character takes us into a weird, confusing and upsetting story. It's not easy to follow due to its complexity but I think the movie has a linear plot. The happenings succeed in a linear chronology in spite of the schizophrenic and surrealist ambiance this story has.The cinematography is quite good, with a nice camera work (shots/plans) and the shot of beautiful images (the landscapes for instance). The musical score is also good with some creepy and frightening string sounds.I score it 8/10 for the weird and surrealistic story and also the beautiful cinematography.

pmdawn I'm not really familiar with Robert Altman - I liked Gosford Park, but that's it. However, the plot summary intrigued me enough to check this long lost film.Yes, like all the other reviews say, there are obvious parallels with "Persona" and "Repulsion". It's the kind of movie that messes with your mind, and I love movies like this. I would like to add that the eerie, bizarre atmosphere of this movie reminded me of David Lynch.We see the movie through the eyes of a schizophrenic woman, and just thinking that someone in real life can go through this gives me shivers. It's also what I like to call a "hallucinogenic" movie, in which the dreamy scenery, the incredible camera work and the twisted dialogue play as if you were on a psychedelic substance.Susannah York gives a strong performance, and the beautiful Cathryn Harrison also make this movie worth viewing.If you like surreal movies, with a haunting atmosphere or psychological subjects, do yourself a favor and dig this good arty flick up. Others should not bother.6/10