Good start, but then it gets ruined

Awesome Movie

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

...now I wish it had remained that way.WARNING: If you stumble upon this movie while surfing TV, keep surfing!This isn't even a good one time watch. It's the most boring, senseless piece of trash I've ever watched. I can't believe someone made this move. I can't believe Paul Newman signed on to play in this movie. I can't believe it was ever released.This is a bad, bad, bad, movie.

I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.

When Robert Altman's relations with 20th Century-Fox were increasingly worsening, he made "Quintet" and "HealtH", sold his production company Lion's Gate, and started shooting Jules Feiffer's script of "Popeye" for Disney and Paramount, a move that in a way signaled a rupture with his previous cinema, centered on the survey of American institutions and film genres. "Quintet" is a cryptic, enigmatic science-fiction drama that takes place in a decimated, permanently cold world. A hunter (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife (Brigitte Fossey) arrive to the only community of human survivors. The woman is killed —eliminating the possibility of new life— and the hunter participates in a game called quintet, associated (as it has been said somewhere else) with five stages of life: the pain of birth, the strain of maturation, the guilt of existence, the terror of aging, and the finality of death. Altman himself invented the game (which I never understood, to tell the truth, but I could not care less), and the player that loses must die in real life, as the hunter, who has to fight for his life. Photographed by Jean Boffety with a permanent filter that diffuses the corners of the frame, and shot almost entirely inside the abandoned installations of Expo 67 in Montréal (except for the opening and ending, photographed in frozen exteriors), duplicating the feeling of loss and ruin, while the wardrobe adds the sensation of timelessness and worldliness, "Quintet" is a nihilistic vision of the world that some see as the third film of a surrealist trilogy, also conformed by Altman's "Images" and "3 Women". Besides American Newman and French Fossey, the international cast includes Spaniard Fernando Rey, Italian Vittorio Gassmann, Swedish Bibi Andersson, and Danish Nina Van Pallandt. An attractive cinematic experience, it is science fiction "a la Altman", who was not precisely a master of all genres, but a filmmaker who liked to revise them and come out with something else, usually interesting.

(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.