The 160-Minute Runtime of Nashville Flies Right By Thanks To How Well-Made It Is

Welcome to the Bi-Centennial Celebration of America. The year is 1976 and everyone is gearing up to celebrate 200 years of existence for the United States of America. Nashville follows the lives of a wide assortment of characters in Nashville, Tennesse over the course of a few days, with one of the key unifying elements across this bevy of storylines being that a controversial political figure is preparing to give a speech in this Southern city. Among the people we follow over the course of Nashville are singer Linnea Reese (Lilly Tomlin), her husband Delbert Reese (Ned Beatty), rocker Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) and so many others. The cast is so dense that it includes Jeff Goldblum showing up in an assortment of dialogue-free appearances as a figure only referred to in the credits as The Silent Tricycle Man.

Mikey and Nicky Dives Headfirst Into A Grim Tone With Exceptional Results

We begin Mikey and Nicky in media res. Something has gone horribly wrong. Nicky (John Cassavetes) is alone in a hotel room profusely sweating after learning a hit has been put out for him. There's only one person he can turn to: his life-long friend Mikey (Peter Falk). Considering they've been pals since childhood, Nicky gives Mikey a ring and asks him to come to the hotel room and help him out of this jam. It isn't long before Mikey arrives and tries to talk Nicky down from his hysterical state. The two proceed to create a plan for Nicky to leave town, but before he can do that, Nicky insists the two friends spend the rest of the night in New York City doing whatever comes into his head.

The Brilliant Satire Network Has Become Tragically All Too Relevant In 2017

"What's old is new again" as they say, and while it's not a perfectly equal comparison, it must be said that the world of America in 1976 (the year in which Sidney Lumet's Network was released) does bear a great resemblance to America in 2017. A historically catastrophic President? A recent grisly war that has not produced the sort of triumphant victories America is accustomed to in its foreign affairs? People looking for answers in their entertainment? Some variations of all those ideas always exist in human society but they're particularly potent in both 1976 and in the modern era, making Network one of those amazing movies that's both a perfect time capsule of the era in which it was released and also something that feels incredibly relevant multiple decades after its initial release.