The Player - 1992 - 2 Stars

Actors:  Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi
Director:  Robert Altman

It's difficult to be generous to a film like this, because it is SO satisfied with itself.  It thinks it is the greatest.  It even has an answer to any criticism - any elements of the film which feel 'off' such as, well, all of them - short of the masterful directing - are Hollywood sendups.  Flat characterization?  Ponderous satire?  A plot that argues for itself as superfluous and necessary at the same time?  The Player has its cake, eats it too, then invents new words for possession and consumption and does both of those to cake at the same time as well.  It is an ouroboros wrapped in a Mobius Strip.  At bottom, it is meaningless.  Ah, just like Hollywood chatter!  How droll! And so forth.

Even more maddening is that it's the kind of movie that critics love, and I love reading critics, so after I get done with writing this, I'm going to read 4 or 5 paeans to this.  Maybe it would've been better in 1992 - observations about car/cell phones and bottled water belong with Lorena Bobbitt jokes in the dustbin of humor.