Robert Altman, the often hated and disliked director marked as a hit and miss finds a very special spot in my heart and why is that? Because no matter how low his films are rated they are always most excellent and this is no exceptions. One of his best in fact.Ladies and gentlemen let me present to you a true masterpiece which is a true mix between surrealism and minimalism. Quirky and oddball as usual it spins around with an enormous amount of great characters and a good bunch of good jokes.You may ask, why make a film this weird? Is it weird just for the sake of being weird? And the answer is YES. Of course it is. Next to every film, including most great ones they are what they are "just because". Why make any film? This film is weird because it fits what it's trying to do. To be weird, quirky and incredibly rare and special. This it achieves! Wonderful atmosphere, genius performances and a story which for most people is hard to get. Can you ask for more? Go with is wonderful flow and experience true art. True art that makes you laugh while it also intrigues you.Hands down one of the best films ever made. Altman does it again.

Robert Altman directs "Brewster McCloud". The plot? Brewster is an eccentric inventor who lives beneath the Houston Astrodome. He spends his days working on a pair of man-powered wings which he hopes will enable him to fly. But while he is busy collecting materials to build his contraption, mysterious deaths occur throughout his city.Altman's running joke is that "Brewster McCloud" is essentially a giant birdwatching film. Indeed, the film is narrated by Rene Auberjonois, who treats the picture as a grand safari, Altman planting bird references everywhere in the form of food, signs, clothes, license plates, characters, costumes, dialogue etc etc. Why Brewster wishes to fly is given a neat twist. Rather than some kind of Icarus complex, Brewster seems to be acting upon suppressed memories. He was born to fly. His entire race was born to fly. He belongs in the skies. It's all in his DNA!Brewster is aided in his quest by Louise, a sort of guardian angel. She has scars down her back, which suggests she once had wings herself. She's like a God or guardian angel, who descends to teach Brewster the mysteries of man's ancient wings. It's all pretty odd, particularly when Altman likens flying to sex, and Brewster's avian urges to psychosexual lusts.Later in the film, Louise is dismayed to learn that Brewster slept with a girl he barely knew (Shelly Duvall). The once pure and naive Brewster thus becomes tainted by the "sins of the flesh". He's contaminated, his earthly sins affixing him to the ground. They seal his mortality and prevent him from entering the angel world up above.To redeem himself, Brewster must therefore seek forgiveness from Louise, who now appears in the guise of Dorothy from "Wizard of Oz". From here on, Altman swathes the film in "Oz" references. Flying monkeys, red slippers, golden roads, they're all subtly woven into the crazy plot. This being Altman, chunks of the film then become covert commentaries on major aspects of American life (sexuality, class-struggle, race, ambition, bigotry, success, economics, crime, politics, religion). These themes are then bound to a plot which is really about the loss of virginity, or rather, idealism. During its climax, Brewster's broken wings and crumpled, twisted body, point toward the climax of Altman's "Nashville", in which characters sing "It Don't Worry Me" after an assassination. Both films take place in cities yearning for economic power, both use large structures as metaphors for America (The Astrodome, the Parthenon), and both posit the creative spirit and personal conscience as being overrun by corporate American, capitalism and commercialism in general.8.5/10 - Worth two viewings.

Folks must have been very stoned when they made this .... It is such a "playful" film with so many great characters (and actors) riding on a very wild and surreal mixed up mythology. The film should be re-released (maybe since Altman got an Oscar they will).I don't know how he got away with making this... but thank God he did! In many ways Robert Altman except for his hands off approach to his actors has created many films that are at the equal to Fredrico Fellini in satire and whimsically profound sequences that baffle the audience -= but ain't it nice to home from a movie and remember it because you just can't get the ideas and images out of your head. This is a very funny film. It has the Star Spangle Banner, Ruby Slippers, Bird Do-Do, Mustard pumps, un-principled law enforcers, and wings that try very hard to fly away.

To follow up "MASH", Robert Altman made this quirky gem about a young man (Bud Cort) living in Houston's Astrodome, who is obsessed with flying to the point that he's building a set of wings. Louise (Sally Kellerman) is the only person in the world who really understands him. Simultaneously, a string of bizarre murders is plaguing the city: the victims are always covered with bird droppings. To solve it, the city hires Bullitt-esquire detective Shaft (Michael Murphy) to investigate. Then things really get weird. Rene Auberjonois plays the narrator, who gets more and more birdlike as the movie progresses.I actually have a connection to "Brewster McCloud": when they were filming it, my mom and her sister went to audition for a part, but the line was too long, so they decided not to (the role eventually went to Shelley Duvall). But that's just a side note. It's a really neat movie.