Despite freezing temperatures in New York, my friend Angela and I manage to trudge down to Union Square to catch Robert Altman's The Company, a movie that I've been happily anticipating for some time. It comes agonizingly close to becoming one of those small movies I'll treasure forever, and indeed, the first ninety minutes is just about everything I'd hoped: often very funny, perfectly observed, always fascinating, and occasionally transcendent. Unfortunately, the closing ballet, an unbelievably goofy avant-garde production called The Blue Snake, flops so completely that it undermines everything that came before it. True balletomanes may appreciate it more than I did, but unlike the ballets in The Red Shoes, which deepened and enriched our understanding of the characters and their emotions, The Blue Snake feels like an episode of Eureka's Castle.

You might argue that an anticlimactic ending is the inevitable result of Altman's inobtrusive, "overheard" style, but Altman has made equally unconventional films ranging from The Long Goodbye to Gosford Park and especially Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller that build to unforgettable climaxes....Despite the ending, however, I'd still argue that The Company is worth seeing. It's a movie full of small pleasures, and one big pleasure, at least for me: one of movie's many dance numbers is lovingly choreographed to David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti's "The World Spins," sung by Julee Cruise, a song that has meant a lot to me for over ten years. Seeing it unexpectedly in the theater last night was one of those late night moments when image and music, or maybe cinema and autobiography, unexpectedly converge, and mysteriously expand to sum up a lifetime.