Shampoo (1975, Hal Ashby) (Patreon)

Second viewing, last seen 2001. Still seems strangely anodyne to me, given the subject matter (and despite Christie's one memorably vulgar line); setting it on Election Day '68 feels like a last-ditch effort to generate Significance where there otherwise isn't much to be found. While it's fun to watch Beatty do befuddled for two hours—his performance here foreshadows Oscar night 2017—he's not so much playing a character as embodying an ostensibly self-effacing (but mostly self-aggrandizing) stand-in for his own wolfish reputation. That sort of Gossip Guy wink-wink doesn't interest me much, so the film's extremely George-heavy first hour inspires one big shoulder shrug. Thankfully, Warden's grotesquely pragmatic financier grows more and more prominent as the film goes on, culminating in the one scene—his rueful morning-after "confrontation" with George, accompanied by threatening bodyguards—that's both darkly funny and genuinely complex. Ends strongly, too, even though Jackie never really registers as more than a generic object of desire. But every shot of Nixon on a background TV set triggered the thought "You're reaching," and I've yet to find a persuasive counterargument from the film's ardent fans. Would’ve preferred something more broadly satirical and less sneakily self-important.