Secret Honor

Dir. Robert Altman (1984).
Perhaps the funniest of all Nixon movies, as well as a worthy knockoff of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Robert Altman’s filmed version of Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone’s one-character play is a self-proclaimed “political myth.” Surrounded by monitors and hitting the Chivas, the post-Watergate Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) engages in a frantic, free-associative monologue—a ranting recapitulation of Nixon’s entire career, addressed to a portrait of Henry Kissinger. The film is basically one long compelling expletive.

Fri., July 23, 9:30 p.m., 2010