Cookie's Fortune (1999)

Wonderful Movie

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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

Robert Altman can be many things. He can be warped, sarcastic, biting — but he can also be affectionate and understanding. His best films often combine these characteristics with slippery perfection, especially when putting the satirical "The Player" or the balmy "Thieves Live Us" into consideration. I, however, prefer him when he's gazing upon his characters with head-shaking fondness. Certainly, "Cookie's Fortune" isn't comprised of saintly characters — but unlike "Short Cuts" or "Nashville", only a few of the players are wholeheartedly f-cked up, giving us less time to analyze potentially devilish psyches and more to relish the tight, almost familial bonds between the ever compelling characters. It's one of his most impeccably entertaining films.Set in a minuscule Southern town defined by colorful people, sweaty heat, and catfish, in that order, "Cookie's Fortune" details the sudden death of Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt (Patricia Neal), an elderly widow tired of living alone and tired of her mundane life. So without much thought, she grabs a gun out of her impressive arms closet, flops onto her bed, places a pillow over her face, and shoots herself in the head. Her niece, Camille (Glenn Close), won't have it. A wannabe playwright with a fondness for cranking up her every emotion by a few thousand notches, she is disgusted by her aunt's carelessness: it will bring shame upon the family, and, most notably, it may even upstage her upcoming play. Consumed with dramatic audacity, she arrives at the scene and decides it would be best to make the suicide actually look like a murder: why not? She runs around the house pretending she's a giallo fiend, breaking windows, stealing valuables, eventually running out the back and throwing the gun into some bushes like Joan Crawford might have during her 1950s-set film noir years. She persuades her dimwitted sister, Cora (Julianne Moore), to go along with the charade, not realizing that covering up a suicide isn't just some cutesy thing mercurial nieces do for fun. It could lead to, you know, trouble.Immediately, Cookie's best friend and confidant, Willis (Charles S. Dutton), is locked up at the local sheriff's office under suspicion, Cora's estranged daughter, Emma (Liv Tyler), keeping him company while also utilizing the opportunity to have closet sex with her cop boyfriend (Chris O'Donnell) to pass the time. No one, including the men who arrested Willis in the first place, believe he's the murderer — which casts further suspicion onto Cookie's weirdo nieces.But "Cookie's Fortune" isn't a conventional crime movie, preferring to use its titular figure's sudden offing as a way of throwing the Mississippi set town off course and seeing how its residents handle the travesty. Anne Rapp's screenplay always retains a certain sort of comic lushness that makes the intersecting situations ceaselessly delightful while also maintaining a sort of broad realism. These people certainly could exist — not all realism based films have to be dirt-on-the-ground miserable — and "Cookie's Fortune" is all the more fun for it. Close is a bundle of laughs, delivering off-color lines like an unintentional comedy pro, Neal ensuring why Cookie was such a vital part of her town's life. Dutton is one of Altman's sweetest scene-stealers, and Tyler, in a terrific performance, is a consistent pleasure as a free-spirit that seasons the oft conservative setting of the film.Most consider "Cookie's Fortune" to be minor Altman, but I think it's underrated Altman. He regularly goes deep with his films, finding ways to mirror the lives of his flawed characters with our own. But "Cookie's Fortune" is such a delicacy because it's breezy, amusing without any existential kinks. He sets scenes with a sort of nostalgic reverie, figuring that small town America isn't all "Twin Peaks" and can still preserve the same sort of complicated magic of a '70s era sitcom. We watch the characters converse wanting to be a part of their community, either because the friendships seem everlasting or because the disdainfulness is comical rather than harmful. Most would want to get out of the town "Cookie's Fortune" sets itself in right away — not me. I'd like to hole up there for a while, collect my thoughts and have conversation about the good things in life instead of the high drama that shapes the metropolises of America. Lightweight Altman may not be everyone's favorite, but I tend to prefer a grizzled filmmaker when he's enjoying himself. So maybe "Cookie's Fortune" is an accidental masterpiece — it's an underrated moment in his lustrous career.

I watched Cookie's Fortune because of the cast and director. I've always had mixed feelings about Robert Altman but have mostly enjoyed his movies. Aside from Hitchcock, or maybe Scorsese, I tend to view each of a director's movies individually rather than judging it against his/her oeuvre. I truly enjoyed this movie and was especially happy to see (or rather hear, because she was pretty much unrecognizable)Patricia Neal, who played her role with sensitivity and believability. So did the rest of the actors with the exception of Glen Close who veered towards caricature in every scene. The minute she appeared I winced, and continued to do so throughout the movie. Aside from that and despite the confusing "revelation of secrets" at the end (which seemed rushed and forced,)I loved this movie because of the atmosphere of the town, the acting, and the writing which was often laugh-aloud funny. I would recommend this movie to anyone who needs their spirits lifted by some light entertainment with a rueful and forgiving view of community.

The death of an old woman in a small Mississippi town leads to some minor intrigue. It gets off to a slow start, and doesn't really get interesting until the death of Cookie. And even after that, nothing much happens to hold one's interest. The characters are so stupid that one doesn't care what happens to them. The logic given for Close covering up the suicide of Cookie is absolutely ridiculous. The characters' blatant disregard for police procedures is meant to be funny but it's totally idiotic. A good cast is wasted. Altman has directed some great films, but by the time he made this his career was in decline and he does little to breathe life into a weak script.

No spoilers here. The movie is about love, deception, "rapscallionality" and other cool things in a small town, with the kind of cinematography we associate with Altman. Pearl is the right term to use for some of Altman's ensemble pieces: they are layers on layers on layers, and they are built up very slowly, just as a pearl grows.I don't admire everything that Altman has done; there are a number of his movies that didn't rock my socks, but when he hits it, he hits it (as with Short Cuts, McCabe and Mrs Miller, and recently with Prairie Home Companion), with scary precision. You sit there in the theater seat feeling as if not just the director, but the whole cast and crew have you in their sights. Part of this has to be due to Altman's working so much with so many of the same actors. But also, he is simply a great ensemble director.Cookie's Fortune starts out in a quite leisurely fashion, and I had to warn some of my friends not to go to a late night show, but it gets quick fast. While I think the whole cast was great, for me the on-going show-stopper was the performances of Glenn Close and Charles Dutton. It was so clear to me that these two actors, both with considerable stage experience, were having a lot of fun chewing up each other's scenery, and their voice control is what one would expect from them.In Altman's best films there are a multitude of small gem parts, and this is no exception.