McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

I resisted watching this for a long time, even though it is a favorite of my friends; I'm not a huge Altman or Warren Beatty fan, and, for the first half, I wasn't convinced that McCabe was anything other than irritating, from the characters' incessant muttering to the Leonard Cohen songs trying to either lull you to sleep or tell you how you're supposed to feel about the characters. But in the second half, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that this is one truly original, otherworldly, sad, and disquieting film. It's not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's lousy with invention and heart.