Want to know the best Robert Altman movies? How about the worst Robert Altman movies? Curious about Robert Altman box office grosses or which Robert Altman movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Robert Altman movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Robert Altman (1925-2006) is a 7-time Oscar® nominated writer, producer and director. He received a Honorary Oscar® in 2005. His IMDb page shows over 89 credits from 1951-2015. This page ranks 25 Robert Altman movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, video games and documentaries were not included in the rankings. This Robert Altman page comes from a request by Flora.
Robert Altman Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Robert Altman movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Robert Altman movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Robert Altman movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Robert Altman movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Robert Altman movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Robert Altman movie won.
- Sort Robert Altman movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Robert Altmanl Table
- Three Robert Altman movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 8.57% of his movies listed. M.A.S.H. (1970) is his biggest box office hit.
- An average Robert Altman movie grosses $34.90 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 23 Robert Altman movies are rated as good movies…or 65.71% of his movies. Short Cuts (1993) is his highest rated movie while Quintet (1979) is his lowest rated movie.
- Six Robert Altman movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 17.14% of his movies.
- Three Robert Altman movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 24.00% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 14 Robert Altman movies scored higher that average….or 8.57% of his movies. M.A.S.H. (1970) got the the highest UMR Score while Quintet (1979) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Robert Altman
1. Robert Bernard Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1925.
2. Robert Altman was voted the 17th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
3. Robert Altman’s Honorary Oscar® was: “For a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike“.
4. Robert Altman directed 3 movies to a Best Picture Oscar® nomination: 1970’s M.A.S.H., 1975’s Nashville and 2001’s Gosford Park.
5. Robert Altman’s The Player holds several Oscar® records. The cast includes 13 Oscar winners and 13 Oscar nominated performers. Oscar® winners in cast: Cher, James Coburn, Louise Fletcher, Whoopi Goldberg, Joel Grey, Anjelica Huston, Jack Lemmon, Marlee Matlin, Tim Robbins, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Rod Steiger and Sydney Pollack. 13 Oscar® nominationed performers: Karen Black, Dean Stockwell, Michael Tolkin, Gary Busey, Peter Falk, Teri Garr, Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould, Buck Henry, Sally Kellerman, Burt Reynolds, Nick Nolte, Lily Tomlin.
6. Robert Altman has been married 3 times….he had five children. His son, Mike Altman, wrote the lyrics for “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song for 1970’s MASH, when he was only 14 years old.
7. Robert Altman directed 6 different actresses in Oscar®-nominated performances: Sally Kellerman, Julie Christie, Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith.
8. While working on 1971’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Altman and Warren Beatty hated each other so much that Beatty later admitted that, had he produced the film himself, he would have killed Altman.
9. Robert Altman did not have many blockbuster movies….but his M.A.S.H. is listed in the Top 100 Box Office Hits of All-Time…..adjusted grosses.
10. Check out Robert Altman’ career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Interesting choice. Looking at the stats he might be the best least successful director ever. Many of these movies I have not heard of before. I did like The Player and Gosford Park
Hey Stein….thanks for stopping by….he was sitting on top of the request list so I went ahead and picked him as the next UMR subject. I liked a The Player too….I thought Gosford Park was ok. Appreciate the comment and the visit.
A celebrated director but not one of my favorites, his films don’t really appeal to me. Only one blockbuster movie? Looking at the box office chart the rest don’t even come close to MASH’s success.
I’ve seen 7 of the 35 films listed here, they are – MASH, The Player, Pret-a-Porter, Countdown, Popeye, The Gingerbread Man and The Long Goodbye.
Countdown, MASH and The Player are my favorites from that group.
Of the others I wouldn’t mind checking out McCabe & Mrs. Miller and California Split.
Another fine movie page Bruce. Voted Up!
Still waiting for that massive sci-fi page to turn up. I’ll bet I’ve seen quite a few of those. 😉
Hey Steve…thanks for checking out the latest UMR page. His box office record is not too impressive. M.A.S.H. was a SMASH….but only Popeye (and people hated this movie when it came out) and Nashville topped the magical $100 million mark.
7 is your tally count….I have that beat as my tally count is 11. I would say Short Cuts is one that should go on your list of ones to watch….it has a massive cast….and the way the stories mingle together is awesome. There is a Lyle Lovett part that I think about all the time…..yes the great thespian Lyle Lovett gives a memorable performance as a pissed off baker.
M.A.S.H and The Player are two of my favorites too….trying to find all 26 Oscar nominated performers is a fun game to play. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a cult classic…..but it was a one and done movie for me….though the final scene with Beatty has stuck with me all of these years later.
As always…thanks for sharing your thoughts….especially on someone who is not a favorite of yours.
1 Iconic in movies legend are The John Ford western, the Vincente Minnelli musical and Hitch as the Master of Suspense. However audiences have never been able to categorise a Robert Altman’ movie as he tackled a wide variety of subjects with some of them being very offbeat such as Quintet.
2 Perhaps for those reasons he has with 34.9 mil the lowest Cogerson box office average for a renowned movies artist that I can immediately remember. Even the combined pull of Lancaster/Newman couldn’t save Buffalo Bill and the Indians in the commercial markets; and one didn’t need hindsight to predict that a film with the cumbersome title of Come Back—————Jimmy Dean would find difficulty in ringing the box office tills.
3 However Possibly Interesting Facts records that Altman is in the Top 20 greatest directors of all time so that as Thomas’ post hints what Robert lost in box office stature he made up for in critical acclaim. Also MASH and its enormously successful TV spin off became one of the most lucrative franchises of the seventies with Hawkeye Pierce and the rest becoming household names. With MASH Altman claims the possibly dubious credit for a ‘first’ in that he says that it is the earliest film from a MAJOR STUDIO to use the F word on the screen.
4 Interesting info about Altman and Shirley MacLaine’s little brother. Among performers Beatty’s antics seems to made him a few enemies. For example some years ago he is supposed to have ‘stolen’ the young girlfriend of Guns n Roses singer Axl Rose; and Axl made a record that was critical of “old men dating young girls” which it was said was aimed at Beatty. It developed into quite a pantomime actually with Axl on horseback pursuing his former sweetheart through a shopping mall in an attempt to win her back!
5 Anyway the Altman page is a good document as Bruce has demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses in the career of an important filmmaker.
Hey Bob..
1. I agree….even his passing went pretty much unnoticed by the general public. It was a heavy loss for Hollywood…but the lack of box office success kept him from being a household name.
2. When looking at one of the tables in my database…..of the 493 subjects listed…Altman has the 5th lowest average box office…..with David Bowie 493rd, Mill Jovovich 492nd, Woody Allen 491st, Kevin Smith 490th and Altman at 489th.
3. If you take out M.A.S.H. his average is all the way down to about $23 million per film…..which is only ahead of Bowie….I think Bowie did other stuff besides movies……lol.
4. Not thinking too many people that have UMR pages have a Paul Newman movie ranked last in their table….Altman’s 2 Newman movies only grossed about $24 million combined…..how did a great director and a great actor manage to have such horrible numbers together? Granted I saw Quintet years ago and it was dreadful….I wonder since I am older and wiser now…would I like Quintet more?
5. Interesting trivia about M.A.S.H.
6. Good old Warren Beatty….I imagine if he published a tell all book….there would be some great stories in that one for sure.
Thanks for the input and the kind words….both are greatly appreciated.
HI BRUCE!
1 Any book about Beatty might not hold too much value for the most devoted film buffs as although enjoying patchy screen success he has only 22 films listed in Cogerson and your Ready Reckoner gives him an uninteresting total gross of around $1.850 Bn and an unimpressive average of just under $84 million
2 When they were making Dick Tracy together in 1990 Warren and Madonna commenced a romantic relationship and when she made a documentary that was released in cinemas called Truth or Dare (1991) and which covered one of her concert tours he was in it.
3 He seemed to spend a lot of his time hanging around her dressing room on the tour and at one point I concluded from the tone of her voice that she was maybe becoming tired of his constant presence. Certainly if he had put into his move career the time that he apparently devoted to his off-screen activities he might have engendered box office grosses on a par with those of say Cruise and Hanks.
4 Returning to our main theme in Warren’s case about how he made enemies your very comprehensive Gene Hackman page mentions the early-years films that Beatty and Hackman did together; but did you know that Gene ultimately declined a part in Dick Tracy because of the extent to which he had come to detest Beatty?
5 Everyone seemed to like Warren’s big sister though and were you aware that when Sir Maurice came to Hollywood to co-star with her in Gambit (1966) she devoted a lot of time to
doing the rounds with Sir M in order to introduce him to prominent Hollywood insiders including an actor whose name I now don’t with to mention for a while?
BOB
PS: Don’t you dare track down Truth or Dare and credit it’s box office gross to Warren’s total !!!
Hey Bob.
1. I was surprised that Beatty’s film output was so low….I guess he has been very picky about his movies…..though he has a new one coming out in the near future…his first new movie in 15 years….rumor has it that Jack N. might be in it too.
2. I did not know he and Hackman had a falling out…Hackman was in his Reds…so they most have kept a friendship for many years..maybe something happened on the set of Reds…probably never know.
3. Hey….that is a good idea about adding Truth or Dare to his totals…lol.
4. I agree …Sir Michael has always given Shirley MacLaine props for helping him out. I can vouch for MacLaine’s greatness….and kindness. She has done 3 awesome things for me….she sent me a private message on Facebook…..she sent me a personalized autograph….and she attached her UMR page to her Facebook page…with a message that said….check this out. I have very fond memories of Ms. MacLaine.
🙂
HELLO AGAIN BRUCE!
1 Your hunch is 100% correct as Reds was the film that broke the camel’s back with Hackman.
2 When you remember that very final scene that Shirley had with Fred MacMurray in The Apartment before she runs off to Lemmon and you think of the range of emotions that she was able to portray with her face you realise why she won all those nominations and acting prizes. Great actress! and she and Jack had marvellous chemistry in their two films together.
BOB
Hey Bob….I imagine Beatty might have been a handful when he was making his masterpiece….Reds….he might lost Hackman as a friend….but he gained a nice paperweight with his Best Director Oscar win.
MacLaine was awesome in The Apartment….I know the scene you wrote about very well. Speaking of MacLaine….I just picked up latest movie…Elsa & Fred….that came out last year….and she has 5 movies in different stages of production….she is amazing…especially when you consider she has been making movies since Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry….over 60 years ago.
Loved MASH and The Player the rest was ok to me.
Hey Faye Fan…..I would say M.A.S.H. and The Player would be in my Top 3….with The Long Goodbye…..which has one of my favorite endings of all-time. Thanks for the comment.
Nice page. He was not Mr. Box Office for sure. You take away Mash and his movies grossed almost nothing. Still there are some quality works listed here. Good job keep them coming.
Hey Thomas….I was surprised that he had only 3 $100 million hits….another surprise was that only 6 of his movies got an Oscar nomination in any category….I figured with the box office being somewhat small…the Oscar love would be much higher. Thanks for the nice words.