Like gambling itself, the impulses of Altman's characters [in "California Split"] seem a matter of luck or catastrophe, resting on choices ungoverned by rehearsal. The film gives us the sense that it is being improvised. We catch at events and personalities by the ends of threads. Everything seems to be going on in some tight corner of life that is off the direct route, inhabited by something musky, dangerous, and surprisingly poetic. The characters suffer the fierce aloneness that Altman identifies in American living. His film is an implacable and minatory one. It is sometimes very funny, in a mood of not caring whether you find it so or not…. Using the overlapping talk that has always been so potent in his movies, Altman again shows that he has a mysterious feeling for the low-toned energy of American humor. His films have a supple genius for the awkward...