short cuts movie review

Los Angeles always seems to be waiting for something. Permanence seems out of reach; some great apocalyptic event is on the horizon, and people view the future tentatively. Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” captures that uneasiness perfectly in its interlocking stories about people who seem trapped in the present, always juggling.

The movie is based on short stories by Raymond Carver , but this is Altman’s work, not Carver’s, and all the film really has in common with its source is a feeling for people who are disconnected – from relatives, church, tradition – and support themselves with jobs that never seem quite real. It is hard work, no doubt, to be a pool cleaner, a chauffeur, a phone-sex provider, a birthday cake decorator, a jazz singer, a helicopter pilot, but these are professions that find you before you find them. How many people end up in jobs they planned for? Altman is fascinated by the accidental nature of life, by the way that whole decades of our lives can be shaped by events we do not understand or even know about.

“Short Cuts” understands and knows because it is filmed from an all-seeing point of view. Its characters all live at the same time in the same city, and sometimes their paths even cross, but for the most part they don’t know how their lives are changed by people they meet only glancingly.

Imagine the rage of the baker ( Lyle Lovett ), for example, when he gets stuck with an expensive birthday cake. We could almost comprehend the cruel anonymous telephone calls he makes to the parents ( Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison ) who ordered the cake, if we didn’t know their child missed his birthday because he was hit by a car. Imagine what they would say to the unknown driver ( Lily Tomlin ) who struck their child. But we know that she wanted to take him to a doctor; the boy refused because he has been forbidden to get into the cars of strangers, and besides, he seemed OK. If you knew the whole story in this world, there’d be a lot less to be angry about.

The movie’s characters all seem to be from somewhere else, and without parents. Their homes are as temporary as the trailer park two of the characters inhabit, where people come and go, no one knows from where, or to where. The grandparent ( Jack Lemmon ) of the injured little boy has disappeared for years. Faced with a son and grandson he hardly knows, he spends most of his time talking about himself.

The jazz singer would rather drink than know her daughter.

Sad, insoluble mysteries seem right under the surface. Three men go on a fishing trip and discover the drowned body of a dead woman. They have waited a long time and come a long way for this trip, and if they report the woman, their trip will be ruined. So, since she’s already dead, what difference will a few more days make? And what would the police do, anyway? There’s a motorcycle cop ( Tim Robbins ) in the movie, who seems to be a free-lancer, responsible to no one, using his badge simply as a way to get his will, spending a lot of time cheating on his wife ( Madeleine Stowe ), who finds his lies hilarious.

Almost everybody drinks all through this movie, although only a few characters ever get exactly drunk. It’s as if life is a preventable disease, and booze is the medication. Sex places a very slow second. The pool cleaner’s wife ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ) supplements the family income by working as a phone-sex performer, spinning verbal fantasies to strangers on the phone, while sitting bored in her living room, changing her baby’s diapers. Her husband ( Chris Penn ) is angry: “How come you never talk that way to me?” Think about that. He’s married to her. They sleep in the same bed. He can have actual physical sex with her. But he envies the strangers who will never meet her – who value her inaccessibility: She services their fantasies without imposing her own reality.

Some of these characters, if they could find each other, would find the answers to their needs. The baker, for example, has unexplored reserves of tenderness. He could help the sad young woman ( Lori Singer ) who plays the cello, and waits for those moments when her mother (Annie Ross), the jazz singer, is sober. The cop would probably be happier talking with the phonesex girl than carrying on his endless affairs, which have no purpose except to anger his wife, who is past caring. He likes the deception more than the sex, and could get off by telling the stranger on the other end of the phone that he’d been cheating with “another phone-sex girl.

Yet these people have a certain nobility to them. They keep on trying. They hope for better times. The hash-house waitress (Tomlin) loves her husband ( Tom Waits ), who is so good to her when he’s not drinking that she forgives the dark times when he is drinking. The parents of the little boy find an unexpected consolation from the baker. The wife ( Anne Archer ) of one of the fly-fishermen finds a new resolve and freedom. Life goes on.

Altman has made this kind of film before, notably in “ Nashville ” (1976) and “ The Player ” (1992). He doesn’t like stories that pretend that the characters control their destinies, and their actions will produce a satisfactory outcome. He likes the messiness and coincidence of real life, where you can do your best, and some days it’s just not good enough. He doesn’t reproduce Raymond Carver’s stories so much as his attitude.

In a Carver story (and you should read one if you never have), there is typically a moment when an ordinary statement becomes crucial, or poetic, or sad. People get blinding glimpses into the real nature of their lives; the routine is peeled aside, and they can see they’ve been stuck in a rut for years, going through the motions.

Sometimes they see with equal clarity that they are free to take charge, that no one has sentenced them to repeat the same mistakes.

Carver died five years ago, at 50, of a brain tumor. He believed he would have died at 40, of alcoholism, if he hadn’t found a way to stop drinking. When he knew the cancer would kill him, he wrote a poem about that bonus of 10 years, called “Gravy.” Altman, who spent most of the 1980s in a sort of exile after Hollywood declared him noncommercial, continued to make films, but they didn’t have the budgets or the distribution a great filmmaker should have had.

Then came the comeback of “The Player,” and now here is “Short Cuts.” Gravy.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Tim Robbins as Gene Shepard
• Andie MacDowell as Ann Finnigan
• Bruce Davison as Howard Finnigan
• Matthew Modine as Dr. Ralph Wyman
• Madeleine Stowe as Sherri Shepard
• Julianne Moore as Marian Wyman
• Frank Barhydt

Directed by

• Robert Altman

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SHORT CUTS (1993) – A 30th Anniversary Review

Introduction

With a deft ensemble and complex themes, Robert Altman’s  Short Cuts (1993) is a well-crafted menagerie of ideas that mostly come together in a rewarding way.  The film is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month.

As a fleet of helicopters sprays for medflies in Los Angeles, a group of citizens combats problems in their daily lives. One of the pilots Stormy (Peter Gallagher) wants to see his son, but his wife Betty (Frances McDormand) is sleeping with a series of men, including police officer Gene (Tim Robbins). Gene’s wife Sherri (Madeline Stowe) is suspicious of Gene, who hates the family dog. Sherri’s artist sister Marian (Julianne Moore) is married to Dr. Ralph (Matthew Modine). Salesman Stewart (Fred Ward) and party clown Claire (Anne Archer) meet Marian and Ralph and plan a dinner date.

Waitress Doreen (Lily Tomlin) deals with the hardships of her job as well as her alcoholic limo driver husband Earl (Tom Waits). Doreen’s daughter Honey (Lily Taylor) is married to makeup artist Bill (Robert Downey Jr.), who is friends with phone sex operator Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and pool cleaner Jerry (Chris Penn). Jerry cleans the pool of TV commentator Howard (Bruce Davidson) his wife Anne (Andie MacDowell), and his son Casey.

When Dorren accidentally hits Casey with her car and Stuart goes on a fishing trip, things begin to spin out of control for everyone. Earthquakes, helicopters, and long-secret revelations come to light for each group.

Oftentimes with films concerning interwoven narratives, some stories may get prominence over others. In the case of Short Cuts , no story feels greater or given more narrative weight than others. Each story is a brief encounter of a particular piece of the story. It is given equal weight to the others, without a particular story being lessened.

More than anything, this film shows these characters spinning. No character has a goal. They are slaves to their circumstances, only living with impulse and selfishness. Characters cheat, lie, and only care about consequences when the results are too grand to ignore. Even with the benefit of hindsight, most characters can’t grasp their effect on others. They are too self-absorbed to think of anything else.

Cast/Direction

The cast is the main draw and the amount of famous faces is almost staggering. The famous scene of Moore arguing while bottomless is stark for its portrayal of casual nudity, but also for her fearlessness. She is so raw with her emotions, that the fact that she is starkly nude is barely registered. Similarly, McDormand plays a character so unlike her expected roles, that it feels exceptionally varied. Her role is one of a playful sexpot who refuses to be pigeonholed.

Stowe might be my favorite performance. Her initial annoyance with the obvious cheating of her husband paints her as a naïve victim, but it turns out she has more going on under the surface. In fact, her character might be the only self-aware person in the whole film. Jack Lemmon shows up for a few scenes and blows the doors off. He has an extended monologue where he gives context to his estrangement with his son which is some of the most memorable in the film. The rest of the cast is good but sinks firmly into the ensemble.

Altman somehow manages to keep all these balls in the air without dropping any of them. The care and attention paid to each story is commendable in and of itself. A storyboarded timeline of connections and events would be staggering. There’s a good reason the film is three hours long.

Sprawling and intricate, Short Cuts is a well-acted portrait of the fears and lives of early 90s Los Angeles. The effort might be a bit better than the film, but it certainly isn’t boring.

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Short Cuts (1993)

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Short Cuts Reviews

An impeccable ensemble cast including Tom Waits, Tim Robbins, Chris Penn, Jack Lemmon, Andie MacDowell, Lily Tomlin and Julianne Moore give authentic life to incidental players in an ongoing melodrama that speaks loudly of the modern malaise.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 16, 2024

It has the ability to generate thoughtful conversation between viewers. If you sit down and watch this with a good friend, you’ll probably both come out of it with very different observations.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 7, 2023

Short Cuts is a long film, but it is not boring because the cast of characters is so numerous and the incidents so varied.

Full Review | May 26, 2022

It's challenging to pick just one stellar performance.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2022

A movie of Carver's work needed to show this process whereby simple acts and objects are also abstractions. Altman has shown it...

Full Review | Aug 14, 2018

Whether their characters are congenial, contemptible or just absurd, Altman gets the best from an extraordinary company.

Full Review | May 11, 2018

Worth the buy for one scene: watching a young Robert Downey, Jr. elbow-punch a couch.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2016

It's a funny/scary vision, with a manic edge -- which is why, when you come down from the high of the filmmaking, you may be left with the taste of ashes in your mouth. Altman's artistry can make you happy even when his art offers cold comfort.

Full Review | Apr 7, 2016

We are never made to care much about the afflicted characters because Altman doesn't and thereby the stories carry very little weight.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 22, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

The epidosic (by necessity) movie is uneven, but some of the stories are poignant and the acting always compelling

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 28, 2011

Performances are low key but accomplished, comedy and tragedy are delicately balanced and the whole thing has the feel of a sprawling but very absorbing soap.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 27, 2008

Cool, clever and complex, Altman succeeds in bringing out the best from a highly talented cast.

As the grand ringmaster, it's here that Altman passes the baton to his actors , whose behavioral insights are critical to the film's success.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2008

The film is fascinating and complex, and benefits from a densely textured soundtrack that makes it as interesting to listen to as to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 27, 2008

Inevitably it's a mixed bag, though the film's assurance in keeping it all coherent is at times exhilarating.

Not prime Altman, but weaves an interesting path due to many sub-plots.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2006

From the exhilarating opening, you know Altman's epic 'adaptation' of eight stories and a poem by Raymond Carver is going to be special.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

Altman weaves magic from Carver's character-rich material.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2005

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Part of the miracle of Robert Altman ‘s triumphantly fierce, funny, moving and innovative Short Cuts is that you can’t get this movie out of your head. You keep playing it back to savor its formula-smashing audacity, its peerless performances and its cleareyed view of blasted lives. Altman weaves nine Raymond Carver short stories (plus one narrative poem) and 22 principal characters into 189 compulsively watchable minutes that leave you wrung out emotionally but still hungry for more. Another key factor in making Short Cuts a milestone is Altman’s stubborn conviction that it’s more fun for audiences to think through a movie than to just sit through it.

In case you haven’t noticed, Altman is on a roll. At 68, the director of such landmarks as M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Nashville is no longer the boxoffice pariah he became after 1980’s Popeye. Last year’s surprise hit The Player — a slashing satire of Hollywood as a metaphor for cultural bankruptcy — brought Altman back. But it didn’t mellow him. Having crafted the best picture of 1992 by blithely biting the hand that fed him, he now gives us the movie event of the year — one that defines an era — by making a film a player wouldn’t risk.

Altman had to go the independent route to scrounge up the modest $12 million needed to make Short Cuts. Carver, who died of lung cancer at 50 in 1988, wrote stories that expressed the desperation of ordinary people in plain, blunt language. His endings weren’t happy but random and brutal. In Carver, the major studios saw disaster. But Altman saw a kindred spirit and the chance to perfect the overlapping plots he’d been experimenting with since Nashville. Carver’s widow, the poet Tess Gallagher, knew the fit was right and gave the necessary go-ahead.

But don’t mistake Short Cuts for a cowed tribute to Carver. Altman and co-writer Frank Barhydt (a notable team on Tanner ’88 ) make startling additions, including the image of helicopters’ spraying medflies that opens the film and the earthquake that ends it. Stories that span decades are compressed into four days, and the setting shifts from Carver’s Pacific Northwest to suburban California. But purists needn’t cry foul. This is not the glamour world of The Player but neighborhoods — from Glendale to Downey — where people worry about keeping jobs and getting cars started. Even when Altman invents new characters or changes names and motivations, he stays true to Carver’s flinty spirit.

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Short Cuts is an intimate epic, but every frame of this wide-screen film — spectacularly shot by Walt Lloyd — is packed with revealing details. Take an early scene in which Howard Finnigan (Bruce Davison), a news anchor on local television, sits up in bed with his wife, Ann (Andie MacDowell), to watch his editorial on the medfly. For just a beat, we notice Ann pick up a magazine — you catch the slight out of the corner of your eye. But in that split second, Altman offers a miniportrait of a marriage. You recall it later, when the couple’s young son, Casey (Zane Cassidy), is hit by a car and their relationship is truly tested.

Buoyed by the whiplash editing of Geraldine Peroni, the film resonates with such moments. It’s part of Altman’s plan to involve us in putting the pieces together. Some characters interact; others merely brush by one another. But all share feelings of love, betrayal and anger.

While the choppers roar overhead, the camera takes us into the home of Lois Kaiser (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is selling phone sex while diapering her baby. “My panties are sooo wet,” she tells the sucker on the line. Though the scene is profanely funny and strikingly acted by Leigh, you feel a distinct chill. Lois’ poolcleaner husband, Jerry (Chris Penn), mutely accepts the talk of hard cocks and hot clits; he knows it helps pay bills. But no way has he adjusted to it.

Sherri Shepard (Madeleine Stowe) hears the medfly choppers and yells at her cop husband, Gene (Tim Robbins in a priceless comic turn), about the toxic effect on their three kids. “Don’t get environmental on me,” says Gene, who’d rather be out banging Betty Weathers (a terrific Frances McDormand). Betty has her own problems with her pilot ex-husband, Stormy (Peter Gallagher, first-rate, as usual). After spraying the medflies, Stormy shows up at Betty’s house and calmly chain-saws everything inside but his mother’s clock and his son’s TV.

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Short Cuts exposes America as one big house divided. Jazz singer Tess Trainer (the great Annie Ross) lives with her cellist daughter, Zoe (Lori Singer), but it’s not just music that separates them. It’s Tess’ bitterness about Zoe’s junkie father, which pours out of her in acid versions of songs by Doc Pomus, Elvis Costello and Bono and the Edge that underscore the film’s theme of alienation.

Most poignant of all are the alcoholic Piggots — Doreen (Lily Tomlin), a waitress, and husband Earl (Tom Waits), a chauffeur who may have molested Doreen’s daughter, Honey (Lily Taylor). Honey is married to Bill Bush (Robert Downey Jr.), a makeup artist who paints bruises on his wife for practice. For Doreen and Earl — Tomlin and Waits are sensational — booze is the dangerous game that helps them duck harsh truths.

It’s Doreen’s car that accidentally knocks down the TV anchor’s son. Fate is a staple of Carver’s work, as is the effort to rise above it. In the hospital, the boy fights for his life as Howard is disturbed by the return of his estranged father, Paul Finnigan (Jack Lemmon in peak form), who pathetically tries to explain away his role in the accident that nearly killed Howard as a child.

Howard and Ann are also plagued by vicious calls from Andy Bitkower (a mesmerizing Lyle Lovett), a lonely baker who becomes an unlikely source of comfort. Altman honors the Carver story “A Small, Good Thing” by finding its heart without stooping to sentiment or uplift.

Another classic Carver story, “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” provides a star-making showcase for Julianne Moore as Marian, the artist wife of Casey’s doctor, Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine). In a burst of repressed feeling, Marian lets her jealous husband have it with a confession of infidelity. That she tells the story naked from the waist down, oblivious to her full pubic glory, provides the scene with an unnerving context that will be much discussed.

Earlier, Marian commented that her paintings are about “seeing and the responsibility that comes with it.” It’s a throwaway line and, typical of Altman, is crucial to the Carver story “So Much Water So Close to Home” that anchors the film. Joining the Wymans for dinner are Stuart Kane (Fred Ward), an out-of-work salesman, and his wife, Claire (a never-better Anne Archer), a clown-for-hire at children’s parties. Stuart brings some trout he had caught the day before on a fishing trip that has driven a permanent wedge into his marriage.

Stuart and his pals Gordon (Buck Henry) and Vern (Huey Lewis) had just walked four hours to their favorite fishing spot when Vern, pissing in the stream, found his urine trickling on the beautiful and dead body of a girl. It’s only after Stuart comes home and makes love to Claire that he tells her how he and his friends made the decision to leave the body in the water for another day and keep fishing. She was dead, wasn’t she?

Claire is shattered; she attends the funeral of the girl but can’t salve her conscience. At least she has one. In Short Cuts, otherwise decent people can’t communicate their feelings because they’ve forgotten how to feel. It’s Altman’s dark mirror on a world not hard to recognize as our own. With the help of a superlative cast, Altman explores the folly and ferocity of human behavior. He puts a buoyant spin on these stories — there’s no heavy moralizing or character gridlock — but the cumulative effect is devastating. Short Cuts is vital entertainment in which Altman makes screen history by richly serving Carver, the audience and his own rebel spirit. You exit feeling that the director once written off as yesterday’s renegade is just revving up.

You don’t have to tell me what you think of the picture, though a little common politeness wouldn’t hurt as you leave.” That’s Robert Altman tweaking a small audience of friends and invited guests before showing an unfinished rough version of Short Cuts last spring at his New York editing room. The toilet, he instructs us, is behind the screen, and we’d be wise to turn on the light first since he’s left the window open, and it’s an eight-floor drop. Altman grins wickedly when I suggest the fall might be fitting punishment for those who’d rather heed nature’s call and piss away part of the film he calls “the best work I’ve done.”

Altman doesn’t like criticism of his films, implied or otherwise. He’s still bristling from the remarks of a friend of his wife’s who had griped, as others will after her, that Short Cuts is “long and confusing.” So these private focus groups are a mystery. What does he get out of them? And do they have any effect on the final product? To find out, I cadged my way into four of them. It’s not what you’d expect — nothing with Altman ever is.

Watching Altman watching others watch an Altman movie is disconcerting at first. While most of us squirm on folding stools, the king of this hill sits enthroned on an overstuffed chair in the rear, attended by assistants who take down his whispered notes and offer refreshments. It seems cushy, yet Altman is anxious. “My fear,” he says, “is that people will give up after an hour.”

Not these people. Such guests as Lauren Bacall, Jonathan Demme and playwright Tony Kushner, whose prizewinning Angels in America will be filmed by Altman, are colleagues and pals. Yet Altman balks at the suggestion that he’s preaching to the choir. “I also purposely invite people that I know are picky — Gore Vidal, Gay Talese, Nora Ephron, Mike Nichols,” he says. “The thing is not to listen to them anyway.” Then why the screenings? “I’m watching the temperature of the room. I know when people get restless. I know when I’m embarrassed seeing a scene through their eyes.”

At each screening, Altman stays alert to every laugh or hushed silence. Body language, he says, lets him know when “I’m hitting the audience on the head too hard.” An omen arrives when Elaine Kaufman calls from her celebrity-filled restaurant to say, “I haven’t heard one negative thing, and the people who come in here are negative about everything.”

Altman knows the slams will come, especially from Hollywood players who resent this maverick outsider and his ridicule. No wonder a deserved Oscar for directing eludes him. “If I really don’t like a movie, I can’t keep my mouth shut,” he says, citing Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple and Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin. “I get angry because that material can never be done again.” His anger can cost him: “I’m going to run into Attenborough or Spielberg, and they’ll have read this, and I’m going to be embarrassed to death.”

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But it’s just this willingness to let it rip that invigorates Altman’s art and his life. At one screening, a viewer tells Altman that she shares the moral repugnance the Anne Archer character feels for her husband after he finds the dead girl in the water and yet continues to fish. “I don’t think the husband did a bad thing,” says Altman. “People say to me, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t do that.’ I say, ‘I would do that.'” The movie allows for both points of view, which is Altman’s purpose: “It is not my business — nor was it Carver’s business — to moralize about these things. I resent in art the definitive explanation for people’s behavior — there isn’t any.”

During the months of revisions, Altman never made a trim that didn’t come from his own gut instinct. In fact, he usually made additions. “As we started cutting it down,” he says sheepishly, “it got worse. So we let it find its own shape.” And correctly so. Without time for nuances, Short Cuts could be deconstructed in a few pat phrases — a true Altman nightmare. He wants to leap into the unknown. If these screenings merely reinforce his trust in us to make the leap with him, they’re worth it. Altman even offers what he believes is an ideal response to Short Cuts: “I don’t know what that was, but it was right.”

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Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’ Stands Tall; Film; Short Cuts

Exploding Raymond Carver's spare stories and minimally drawn characters onto the screen with startling imagination, Robert Altman has made his most complex and full-bodied human comedy since "Nashville" in "Short Cuts."

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Remember Me 15 years ago
• Shutter Island 15 years ago
• Green Zone 15 years ago

Exploding Raymond Carver’s spare stories and minimally drawn characters onto the screen with startling imagination, Robert Altman has made his most complex and full-bodied human comedy since “Nashville” in “Short Cuts.”

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Crisscrossing 22 significant characters through an impressively constructed web of interconnected plots and subplots, this is a bemused contemplation of the unaccountable way people behave when fate deals them unexpected hands, embracing everything from slapstick comedy to devastating tragedy. Top reviews and terrific cast will get this Fine Line release off to a strong start in specialized situations, sparked by its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and U.S. bow as opener of the New York Film Festival. Prime marketing challenges entailed in putting the picture over with a wider public include the three-hour running time, fragmented structure and emotional distance stemming from Altman’s characteristic skepticism about the human animal.

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Few films have tried to detail so much, to chart so many trajectories, to drop so many little truths while not insisting upon some grandiose overall statement.

While the filmmaking mastery is evident in every area, the two things that are finally most impressive are the way Altman and co-screenwriter Frank Barhydt have expanded the stories, and the offhandedness of it all. Most films have trouble enough telling one story, but Altman makes juggling a trunk load of them seem easy.

Set mostly in the Pacific Northwest and populated by working class characters , Carver’s stories deal with convulsions in commonplace lives, how people react to the sudden intrusion of setbacks, infidelity, violence and death.

By shuffling the deck of stories, Altman has importantly magnified the elements of chance, randomness and luck as determinants in the cosmic scheme of things. Net effect is that of eavesdropping upon very carefully selected slices of life.

Shifting the action effectively to the blandly anonymous outlying areas of Los Angeles, Altman raises the curtain with Medfly spray being rained down on the city’s inhabitants, a metaphor some will read more into than others. With economical simplicity, he brings on his enormous troupe of players.

They include married couple Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell, whose young son is hit by a car driven by waitress Lily Tomlin, a trailer park denizen whose marriage to chauffeur Tom Waits has hit choppy water. Attending to the injured boy is doctor Matthew Modine, who still wonders if artist wife Julianne Moore had an affair a few years back. They meet married couple Anne Archer, who works as a clown at children’s parties, and Fred Ward at a concert and invite them to dinner, but first Ward is due to take a fishing trip with buddies Buck Henry and Huey Lewis, during which they make the shocking discovery of a dead woman’s body in a river.

Performing at the concert is classical cellist Lori Singer, a loner whose mother Annie Ross sings jazz and ballads at a local club. Among the hangout’s habitues are pool serviceman Chris Penn and wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, who indelibly gives phone sex from home while feeding her kids, and their friends Robert Downey Jr., a special-effects makeup artist, and Lili Taylor, who make the most of a housesitting opportunity.

Medfly chopper pilot Peter Gallagher has split from wife Frances McDormand, who in turn has been having an affair with L.A. cop Tim Robbins, whose wife Madeleine Stowe models for Moore.

Conclusion loosely ties the disparate characters together by way of a unifying event, although it doesn’t unite them physically in one place a la “Nashville.”

Altman has used Carver’s stories as a vehicle for presenting a vast panorama of life problems that are humorous, grim and absurd in equal measure. Viewer interest in the goings-on is generated not by artificial melodrama

or hyped-up filmmaking technique, but by the recognition factor of the human foibles on display.

As the grand ringmaster, it’s here that Altman passes the baton to his actors , whose behavioral insights are critical to the film’s success.

MacDowell excels as a mother agonizing over the prolonged hospitalization of her injured son; with his fascistic glare and manipulativeness, Robbins crystallizes why a lot of people don’t like L.A. cops; Penn subtly registers a limited man going over the edge, and Moore is arresting as the spunky artist (she also stars in what will no doubt be the most discussed scene, in which she casually performs naked from the waist down).

Also noteworthy are Archer, as a woman outraged by her husband’s casual response to finding a corpse; Lemmon, who has a showpiece monologue in which he reveals a dark secret to long-estranged son Davison, and McDormand and Gallagher , the former showing no quarter as a spiteful estranged wife, the latter taking gleeful vengeance on her furniture with a chain saw.

But there are ways in which the film comes up short. Some uncomfortable traces of condescension toward the characters creep in, and film may not be as funny as it sometimes strives to be.

As in any multi-episode film, some vignettes work better than others. The price it pays for being an observant character piece, rather than narrative-driven, is that its length is fully felt.

Altman and lenser Walt Lloyd keep the camera alertly moving but simple, often starting with establishing shots, then closing in on the actors. Editor Geraldine Peroni has done a stupendous job juggling the story lines, never losing sight of one for too long, and expertly judging when to resume another.

Mark Isham’s effective score is abetted by a torrent of source music, notably Ross’ throaty jazz vocals and Singer’s cello playing.

For the record, the Carver stories drawn upon are “Jerry and Molly and Sam, “”Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,””Collectors,””Neighbors,””A Small Good Thing,””So Much Water So Close to Home,””They’re Not Your Husband,””Vitamins” and “Tell the Women We’re Going,” and the narrative poem “Lemonade.”

• Production: A Fine Line Features release and presentation in association with Spelling Films Intl. of a Cary Brokaw/Avenue Pictures production. Produced by Brokaw. Executive producer, Scott Bushnell. Directed by Robert Altman. Screenplay, Altman, Frank Barhydt, based on the writings of Raymond Carver.
• Crew: Camera (Deluxe color; Panavision widescreen), Walt Lloyd; editor, Geraldine Peroni; music, Mark Isham; music producer, Hal Willner; production design, Stephen Altman; art direction, Jerry Fleming; set decoration, Susan J. Emshwiller; costumes, John Hay; sound (Dolby), John Pritchett; associate producers, Mike Kaplan, David Levy; assistant director, Allan Nichols. Reviewed at TriStar screening room, Culver City, Aug. 9, 1993. (In Venice Film Festival.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 184 MIN.
• With: Ann Finnigan ... Andie MacDowell Howard Finnigan ... Bruce Davison Marian Wyman ... Julianne Moore Dr. Ralph Wyman ... Matthew Modine Claire Kane ... Anne Archer Stuart Kane ... Fred Ward Lois Kaiser ... Jennifer Jason Leigh Jerry Kaiser ... Chris Penn Honey Bush ... Lili Taylor Bill Bush ... Robert Downey Jr. Sherri Shepard ... Madeleine Stowe Gene Shepard ... Tim Robbins Doreen Piggot ... Lily Tomlin Earl Piggot ... Tom Waits Betty Weathers ... Frances McDormand Stormy Weathers ... Peter Gallagher Tess Trainer ... Annie Ross Zoe Trainer ... Lori Singer Paul Finnigan ... Jack Lemmon Andy Bitkower ... Lyle Lovett Gordon Johnson ... Buck Henry Vern Miller ... Huey Lewis

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Short Cuts Review

01 Jan 1993

187 minutes

At 69, the venerable Robert Altman is on wickedly irreverent, misanthropic form, following up The Player with his most complex, kaleidoscopic slices-of-life picture since Nashville. Adapted from a collection of Raymond Carver's distinctively downbeat short stories — although Carver suggested more empathy with his people than Altman can muster — it's a masterful collage of Los Angeles as a madhouse, echoing, but vastly improving upon, Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon.

Embodying society's ills, 22 key characters' lives parallel or interconnect comically, tragically, and very bizarrely through everyday incidents, work, sex, blood relations, swimming pools, lies, an abandoned dog, murder, suicide and even an earthquake. Weary waitress Lily Tomlin, for example, runs down the son of upscale housewife Andie MacDowell and TV commentator Bruce Davison, necessitating the skills of surgeon Matthew Modine while oblivious baker Lyle Lovett is icing the child's birthday cake. Jennifer Jason Leigh sells phone sex while husband Chris Penn cleans pools, and cop Tim Robbins issues traffic tickets when he isn't bedding Peter Gallagher's ex-wife, Frances McDormand, or abusing his own wife, Madeleine Stowe.

Round and round they go in smoggy suburban Sodom to a jazzy soundtrack under Altman's sharp, malevolent gaze, like synchronised swimmers being swept together towards cataclysmically spectacular falls. The hectic company — rewarded jointly for their work at the Venice Film Festival — is a be-there-or-be-square ensemble that ranges from Jack Lemmon to Robert Downey Jnr., to musicians Lovett, Tom Waits, Huey Lewis and Annie Ross (whose mother-daughter strand in the proceedings, with Lori Singer as her unhappy, weird offspring, is the one that doesn't mesh entirely satisfactorily with the other "prisoners of life").

In its eventful, almost entirely gripping three hours of satirising vice and folly, this is guaranteed to offend some with its parade of oppressed, depressed or gratuitously naked women and selfish, obsessed or otherwise awful men. More, however, are bound to be struck by the penetration and skill with which Altman has pulled off a heartless but heady — and very happening — film.

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Movies | 16 10 2009

Short Cuts (United States, 1993)

Helicopters thunder through the air over Los Angeles, raining malathion on the city in an attempt to end the dreaded Medfly invasion. Below, in each house and apartment, an individual drama is being played out. As in any human settlement at any time in history, there is joy, sadness, jealousy, fear, reconciliation, pain, and death. With Short Cuts , a film by director Robert Altman based on nine short stories and one poem by the late Raymond Carver, the audience is given a glimpse into several of those dramas.

Infidelity mars two marriages, while a tragic accident to another couple's son brings their lives to an abrupt halt. A trio of fishing buddies find a dead girl's body floating near their campsite. Another marriage is troubled by a husband's uncertainty about his wife's career choice -- running a phone sex business. A man decides to teach his estranged wife a little something about the real meaning of "dividing things up", and a mother and daughter discover the pain that can come from not communicating.

Twenty-two characters and ten tales -- it would take a master to interweave all of these into a seamless whole. There are few directors who would tackle the challenge, and fewer still who could succeed. Not only has Robert Altman faced the Herculean task, but he has emerged victorious. Short Cuts is a magnificent triumph, an example that dramas can still be found that don't make use of the time-honored tactics of manipulation and oversentimentalization.

Each of the stories told in Short Cuts (except perhaps one) could easily warrant its own movie. There are facets of each character that are left unexplored, and, in a sense, we're still waiting for more when the final credits begin to roll. In spite of the long running time, there's a lot left unsaid and undone by the time the movie slides into home plate.

What is impressive about Short Cuts is not only that it presents so many diverse personalities and situations, but that it manages to interconnect them in a manner that doesn't leave the viewer shaking his or her head in confusion. The film's texture is rich, and the three hours fly by. Fans of Carver, however, should check their expectations at the door -- these are not strict adaptations (as the change of setting from the Pacific Northwest to angst-riddled LA indicates). Altman admits that Short Cuts is "not a verbatim retelling of Carver's works, but rather a cinematic interpretation of their essence."

Altman has surrounded himself with an ensemble cast that includes some highly-respected names. Some he has worked with before; others are new to his fold. For the most part, the performances are solidly-executed, although there are instances of overacting. Matthew Modine, Andie MacDowell, Madeleine Stowe, and Tim Robins have moments of anger that don't ring true. However, in the overall scope of things, this is a minor complaint.

As is almost always the case in a movie of this nature, there will be a story or two that won't interest you much, and a certain group of characters which, for one reason or another, will enthrall you. One of the strongest attributes of Short Cuts is that the stories occupying the "middle ground" are all in some way compelling. For the record, my favorite sequences involve three families -- the Kaisers (Chris Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh), the Finnigans (Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison), and the Shepards (Madeleine Stowe and Tim Robbins). The weakest portions, on the other hand, feature husband-and-wife Earl and Doreen Piggot (Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin), and the fishing expedition (Fred Ward, Buck Henry, and Huey Lewis).

In some ways, Short Cuts is loosely-reminiscent of last year's Grand Canyon . In this case, the project is more ambitious and the premise less forced, but there are noticeable similarities. Short Cuts is the better of the two films ( Grand Canyon couldn't resist resorting to manipulation), but similar themes are explored, and some of the same motifs (including an earthquake) are used.

It's a genuine pleasure to find a movie with such a deep and intelligent portrayal of simple human lives, with all their minor triumphs and tragedies. Short Cuts is an example of a highly- respected modern director in top form.

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In the miraculously lifelike clutter of the greatest Robert Altman films there are moments of pure emotional magnitude that seem to lay bare the essence-the elusive, shifting soul-of a character’s humanity. I’m thinking of Lily Tomlin in Nashville (1975) listening silently on the phone to a hunky pop singer’s come-on and realizing, right then, that she’s willing to stray from her marriage, a notion as startling to her as it is to the audience. Or the scene in The Player (1992) when Tim Robbins’ unflappable Hollywood executive reveals the rage beneath his cucumber cool by bashing a screenwriter’s head on the sidewalk. Even at their darkest, moments like these create an enthralling double vision-a contrast between what the character was a moment ago and is now-that speaks to life’s mysterious, transformative flow. Now, in SHORT CUTS (R), his majestic 3-hour-and-7-minute epic, Altman creates a feast of such moments. Freely adapted from nine short stories and one poem by the late Raymond Carver (with one new, original story), this movie about a pack of wayward, boisterous, spiritually hungry characters in contemporary suburban Los Angeles is tremendous fun to watch-it’s as jampacked with eccentric human drama as the wildest soap opera-yet what’s most extraordinary about it is how many of its scenes hit us with the intimate force of revelation. No doubt about it: This is Altman working at the transcendent peak of his powers, creating a movie that, in its richness and scope, its dazzling emotional sprawl, asks to be measured against his greatest achievement, Nashville. Here, once again, Altman weaves the experiences of more than 20 characters into a narrative crazy quilt, a vibrant cinematic metaphor for America’s democratic soul. Altman doesn’t make the mistake of getting mired in Carver’s minimalist gloom. He uses the stories for their compact, enigmatic structure- the sense of moral question marks hovering in the background-but the film’s ebullient, imperially amused tone is vintage Altman, the voice of an artist too intoxicated by life to be a cynic and too worldly-wise not to be. Most of the characters are white middle-class married couples swimming against the current of fate, age, and their own petty, squalid compulsions. An arrogant policeman (Tim Robbins) lies to his wife (Madeleine Stowe) about his restless womanizing. His fabrications are so transparent that, instead of getting angry, she laughs in outraged amazement, knowing he’ll always come home. A hotshot pilot (Peter Gallagher) sneaks into the house of his soon-to- be-ex-wife (Frances McDormand) and gleefully destroys every item of furniture. A yuppie physician (Matthew Modine)-smooth and solicitous in the hospital, edgy and remote at home-sits in his living room trying for the umpteenth time to goad his artist wife (Julianne Moore) into owning up to an adulterous tryst. Unable to stand his ragging, she does confess, standing exposed (literally) before him, the story tumbling out in a wail as cathartic as it is desperate. A bored housewife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) works as a phone- sex operator out of her living room, looking after her toddlers with a blank stare as she whispers dirty nothings. Meanwhile, her husband (Chris Penn) gazes on mystified, wondering why he can’t get her to talk that way to him. Altman interlaces these stories with such wondrous dexterity that, simply as a formal achievement-a tapestry of moods-the picture is spellbinding. Though Short Cuts hooks us from its opening frames, its atmosphere of intermingled hope and dread doesn’t really kick in until a little boy (Zane Cassidy) is hit by a car on his way to school. As the boy lies in a coma, his shell-shocked parents (Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell) hovering over his hospital bed, Altman orchestrates the catastrophe with such a potent sense of metaphysical unease (was it a random accident or some ineffably cruel cosmic joke?) that a note of quiet dismay seems to spread underneath all that follows. What unites everyone on screen is a feeling of restless, inchoate yearning. Snapping at their spouses for sins more imagined than real, boozing at every opportunity (the invisible-because-it’s-right-under- your-nose prevalence of heavy drinking is one of the film’s key motifs), screwing around, or-in the shockeroo climax-erupting into a rage that’s all the more frightening for not being psychotic, the characters in Short Cuts are consumed with trying to make the world mesh with their fantasies; about all that keeps them rooted is the lingering prospect of calamity. When Altman is cooking on all burners, his movies are driven by an almost mystical sense of coincidence and discovery. Characters who appeared loutish or insensitive are suddenly revealed to be the opposite. Tragedy comes ricocheting out of nowhere, and a world that seemed to be falling apart suddenly pulls itself together. What makes the shifts convincing is the astonishing full-bodiedness of the characters, which stems from Altman’s genius for matching performers to their roles. In Short Cuts the actors appear to be drawing on the subtlest aspects of their own personalities. After a while, you find yourself responding less to what the characters do than to simply who they are-whether it’s Annie Ross, with her broken-down hauteur, as a drunken jazz singer who inadvertently makes a martyr out of her cellist daughter (Lori Singer); the wounded radiance of Anne Archer as a woman who can’t accept the fact that her husband (Fred Ward), while off fishing, failed to report the discovery of a young woman’s corpse for three days; Lyle Lovett’s boyish, deadpan inscrutability in the role of an overworked baker who turns comically nasty and then touchingly generous; or the becalmed decency of Bruce Davison as he watches his son in intensive care. As Davison’s estranged father, who shows up in the hospital and launches into a dithering confessional monologue, Jack Lemmon displays a narcissistic desperation worthy of a Tennessee Williams creation. Scored to a series of acrid, moody jazz-pop numbers, Short Cuts lacks the exultant highs of Nashville; its tone is darker, more somberly controlled. At 68, Altman is more willing than ever before to see America as a society wallowing in confusion, loss, fatally missed connections. At times, the film suggests a cross between Nashville and that middlebrow soaper Grand Canyon-a portrait of a nation grasping for meaning in an era of chaotic decline. Yet has there ever been a filmmaker who loved his characters as passionately as Robert Altman does? Even when the people in Short Cuts are in emotional tatters, they’re thrillingly alive. The film’s bittersweet soul is incarnated in the song Annie Ross performs about being a ”prisoner of life.” Altman’s characters are all prisoners of life. Watching Short Cuts, you’re grateful to be a fellow inmate. A

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Robert Altman

The work of two great American artists merges in Short Cuts, a kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver by maverick director Robert Altman. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters as they struggle to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in what is one of Altman’s most compassionate creations.

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• 187 minutes

TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Walt Lloyd, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 soundtrack mix, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio, plus isolated music track
• Conversation between director Robert Altman and actor Tim Robbins from 2004
• Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a feature-length 1993 documentary on the making of Short Cuts
• To Write and Keep Kind, a 1992 PBS documentary on the life of author Raymond Carver
• One-hour 1983 audio interview with Carver, conducted for the American Audio Prose Library
• Original demo recordings of the film’s Doc Pomus–Mac Rebennack songs, performed by Rebennack (Dr. John)
• Deleted scenes
• A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Wilmington

Cover design by Michael Boland, based on a theatrical poster

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Director, Writer

Few directors in recent American film history have gone through as many career ups and downs as Robert Altman did. Following years of television work, the rambunctious midwesterner set out on his own as a feature film director in the late 1950s, but didn’t find his first major success until 1970, with the antiauthoritarian war comedy M*A*S*H. Hoping for another hit just like it, studios hired him in the years that followed, most often receiving difficult, caustic, and subversive revisionist genre films. After the success of 1975’s panoramic American satire Nashville, Altman once again delved into projects that were more challenging, especially the astonishing, complex, Bergman-influenced 3 Women. Thereafter, Altman was out of Hollywood’s good graces, though in the eighties, a decade widely considered his fallow period, he came through with the inventive theater-to-film Nixon monologue Secret Honor and the TV miniseries political satire Tanner ’88. The double punch of The Player and the hugely influential ensemble piece Short Cuts brought him back into the spotlight, and he continued to be prolific in his output into 2006, when his last film, A Prairie Home Companion, was released months before his death at the age of eighty-one.

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Release details.

• Duration: 188 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Robert Altman
• Screenwriter: Robert Altman, Frank Barhydt
• Tim Robbins
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Review/Film Festival: Short Cuts; Altman's Tumultuous Panorama

By Vincent Canby

• Oct. 1, 1993

THE night skies over Los Angeles, which is in a medfly siege of bibical proportions, are filled with helicopters flying in formation as they indiscriminately spray everything below: people, swimming pools, royal palms, trailer parks, stretch limos, possibly also medflies and their larvae. The helicopters menace as they pretend to protect. Their rotors chop the air and puncture the eardrums. With bright red and green wing lights ablink, the machines have the cold precision of android policemen, waggishly festooned.

These images and sounds usher the audience into the world of Robert Altman's big, tumultuous, very fine new film, "Short Cuts," which opens the 31st New York Film Festival tonight at Lincoln Center. The film will be shown at 7:30 at Alice Tully Hall and at 8 P.M. at Avery Fisher Hall, and begins its commercial run on Sunday in Manhattan.

"Short Cuts" is a wonderfully apt selection to open this year's festival. It calls attention not only to the entire career of one of America's most brilliant, most engagingly original film makers, but also to the manner by which this bristly master has managed to endure. Certainly not by giving audiences what some pollster thinks they want, or by revamping last year's megahit.

Mr. Altman goes his own way, though not exactly alone. Like all memorable Altman works, "Short Cuts" openly celebrates movie making as a communal endeavor. In this case, it's an endeavor in which the actors, whom he appears to adore, have been encouraged to realize characters to an extent that might not have been originally imagined by either Mr. Altman or Frank Barhydt, with whom he collaborated on the screenplay.

The paradoxical result of all this collaboration: a film in which the director's personality is evident in every frame. Like Mr. Altman's 1975 classic, "Nashville," the new movie is a vast panorama of interweaving narratives. Like "Nashville," too, it's a movie that beguiles on two levels at once.

One responds to its quite doomy vision of America-the-banal as it approaches the millennium, and to the apparent enthusiasm with which the film came into being. "Short Cuts" is a bifocal experience. It's sometimes alarmingly dispassionate. It raises the spirits not by phony sentimentality but by the amplitude of its art. From time to time, it is also roaringly funny.

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Directed by Robert Altman

Short Cuts raises the roof on America.

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

Andie MacDowell Bruce Davison Jack Lemmon Zane Cassidy Julianne Moore Matthew Modine Anne Archer Fred Ward Jennifer Jason Leigh Chris Penn Joseph C. Hopkins Josette Maccario Lili Taylor Robert Downey Jr. Madeleine Stowe Tim Robbins Frances McDormand Peter Gallagher Austin Friel Dustin Friel Cassie Friel Lily Tomlin Tom Waits Jarrett Lennon Buck Henry Huey Lewis Dirk Blocker Alex Trebek Jerry Dunphy Show All… Lyle Lovett Lori Singer Danny Darst Annie Ross Robert DoQui Margery Bond Darnell Williams Michael Beach Andi Chapman Deborah Falconer Susie Cusack Charles Rocket Jane Alden Christian Altman William H.D. Marlett Suzanne Calvert Natalie Strong Jay Della Jeri Gray Derek Webster Nathaniel Harris Ron McPherson

Director Director

Robert Altman

Producers Producers

Cary Brokaw Mike Kaplan David Levy

Writers Writers

Robert Altman Frank Barhydt

Original Writer Original Writer

Raymond Carver

Editors Editors

Suzy Elmiger Geraldine Peroni

Cinematography Cinematography

Executive producer exec. producer.

Scott Bushnell

Production Design Production Design

Stephen Altman

Art Direction Art Direction

Jerry Fleming

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Susan Emshwiller

Composer Composer

Sound sound.

Margaret Crimmins Lee Dichter John Pritchett Michael Barry

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Dee Dee Altamura

Fine Line Features Spelling Entertainment Avenue Entertainment

Releases by Date

05 sep 1993, 01 oct 1993, 05 jan 1994, 06 jan 1994, 18 feb 1994, 28 apr 1994, 11 may 1994, 12 may 1994, 24 jun 1995, 28 jul 2012, releases by country.

• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical T

Netherlands

• TV 16 Net 5
• Theatrical M/12

South Korea

• Theatrical 18
• Theatrical R

188 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Josiah Morgan ★★★★ 2

BREAKING NEWS: PERSON COMPARES FILM WITH INTERTWINING STORIES TO MAGNOLIA .

Review by Dragonknight ★★★★★ 4

Film #39 of Project 90

”I hate L.A. All they do is snort coke and talk.”

It is only after the end of this 188 minute ambitious adventure in form, narration and character development that Robert Altman’s film starts its life in the viewer’s mind, once it ends you won’t be able to resist it, its characters will continue to live in your mind, the events will keep happening, the past, present and future will become one and then you’ll realize that you've witnessed one of the greatest films of your life. Short Cuts is an unbelievable achievement, it is not just a great adaptation, it is a film that uses the endless abilities of a visual medium called cinema…

Review by tru ★★★★★ 8

i’m addicted to altman’s stylish naturalism.

Review by Sally Jane Black 8

I should have known what I was getting into, but as usual, I didn't bother to consider it until the opening credits kept going, and going, and going, and names I like, love, or found intriguing kept flitting by: Anne Archer, Andie MacDowell (my one true love), Julianne Moore, TOM FUCKING WAITS, Buck Banana Fana Fo Fuck Henry, Lyle Lovett (and those curls), a saucy Jack Lemmon, Jennifer "Jason" Leigh, a reasonably young Robert Downey Jr., Lily Tomlin and her droll deliveries, Frances McDormand, Matthew Modine, and Huey Lewis (?!) all caught my eye, and that is not the whole of it. Of course, this is Robert Altman, a man whose filmography I am only shallowly familiar with, but whose…

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★½ 4

(Episode 7 of The 'I have always wanted to watch that' Podcast with Siegel™)

Nine interwoven LA-based stories about disgruntled people crying out for human connection in their own ways in a modern world.

"You know, I don't know who you think would wanna look at your sad, middle aged ass anymore! ... Don't talk to me like that and don't you come back here! I'm not taking you back no more, understand? No more, I'm not taking you back!"

Rewatching this classic large cast film from Robert Altman definitely added some new perspective on its overarching theme, as the tension builds to a breaking point within these relationships in disarray. While it does not have the same driving energy…

Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★

Legend has it that if you finish this film at midnight and you whisper “short cuts” three times into a mirror, Raymond Carver appears and snorts a couple of lines with you.

Review by marsh boy ★★★★★ 5

200 favorites 

social criticism panorama in the vein of realism

a fleet of deafening helicopters flying in formations like the Valkyrie assault in Apocalypse Now (1979) are spraying agricultural pesticide from the sky. in the suburbs below, we are already made aware: something is hauntingly wrong.

shown in the backdrop of LA, a scene for so many stories of shattered dreams and fatal decadence, Short Cuts shows an irreverent gaze on the traditional American values and the nuclear family-its prowess is found to be intentionally fragmentary, admirable for its individual scenes and even more so for their cohesion. like shards of a broken pane of glass, the individual scenes do little to resemble their cumulative whole. what the film upholds…

Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★★ 15

The Virgin Magnolia vs The Chad Short Cuts .

187 mins; 22 characters; 9 Raymond Carver short stories ( + 1 poem ); 8 families; an abundance of affairs: copious crumbling couplings; plentiful paths crossing; oodles of overlapped dialogue; death, disaster, downstairs whiskers; a number of naked bodies; lotsa laughs, laughs that hurt; a wad of weeps… weeps that heal; Bad-luck abound or just tragic timing?; shimmering skylines of sunny(-ish) long-wavering L.A. as a backdrop to: constant unease for whatever the future may hold; A city cornered by damning disconnect, meandering messiness as mutual malignancy; One (1) Robert Altman.

Review by Evan T ★★★★★ 4

Tremors of cause and effect giving way to foreshadowed consequences, Robert Altman's brooding, slow-zoom style painting brushstrokes of dread over the dirty realism of Raymond Carver's source material. Following closely behind Nashville , Short Cuts is arguably Altman's most impressive exercise in balance. Rarely do so many plates spin at once, PTA being the only director since to handle an ensemble cast so deftly. Magnolia is the obvious comparison, the interconnecting stories which conclude through the shared experience of natural phenomena. Unlike PTA's stylistic use of voiceover and flashy technique, the reserved qualities of Short Cuts ground it in a more realistic world. Dirty phone-calls, ass-scratches and flatulent alarm clocks are just a few examples of Altman’s grotesque observations on human…

Review by Muriel ★★★★★ 3

i wish i could write something coherent about this but i can’t come up with anything that would do it justice so i’m just gonna type down what i wrote in my phone notes: - not to compare them already but this is a lot like magnolia... and i love it! - robert downey jr looking kinda hot here - the altman zoom!!!!!!! it gives me that buzz - if lily tomlin ran over me with her car i’d thank her - altman really just recycled the cast of the player  didn’t he - tim robbins is insufferable in this - julianne moore.  - read someone describe it as a nothing happens but to me everything happened i’m kinda in love…

Review by Carlos Valladares ★★★★★ 3

No one does unsentimental humanism better than Robert Altman.

P.T. Anderson may have found more mainstream success with the ensemble shenaniganry of Magnolia and Boogie Nights , but as far as I'm concerned, Robert Altman is still the wiser, more sagacious, and daring filmmaker. And Short Cuts proves this without a shadow of a doubt.

Who knew that the world of Raymond Carver gelled so perfectly with that of Altman's? It makes the slick garbage that is Birdman Or pale in comparison; Inarritu tries to incorporate Carverism into his show-biz tapestry, but falls flat on his face. Altman doesn't try to stick closely to Carver's hell-raising morality thinkpieces; he uses them as a framework for his own distinct, artistic vision. The…

Review by Frances Meh @ TIFF ★★★★★ 1

Would violently abuse my credit card for phone sex with Jennifer Jason Leigh.

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Movie Review

US Release Date: 10-01-1993

Directed by: Robert Altman

Starring ▸ ▾

• Matthew Modine ,  as
• Dr. Ralph Wyman
• Julianne Moore ,  as
• Marian Wyman
• Fred Ward ,  as
• Stuart Kane
• Anne Archer ,  as
• Claire Kane
• Buck Henry ,  as
• Gordon Johnson
• Huey Lewis ,  as
• Vern Miller
• Lily Tomlin ,  as
• Doreen Piggot
• Tom Waits ,  as
• Earl Piggot
• Zane Cassidy ,  as
• Casey Finnigan
• Bruce Davison ,  as
• Howard Finnigan
• Andie MacDowell ,  as
• Ann Finnigan
• Lyle Lovett ,  as
• Andy Bitkower
• Jack Lemmon ,  as
• Paul Finnigan
• Lili Taylor ,  as
• Honey Piggot Bush
• Robert Downey Jr. ,  as
• Jennifer Jason Leigh ,  as
• Lois Kaiser
• Chris Penn ,  as
• Jerry Kaiser
• Tim Robbins ,  as
• Gene Shepard
• Madeleine Stowe ,  as
• Sherri Shepard
• Lori Singer ,  as
• Zoe Trainer
• Annie Ross ,  as
• Tess Trainer
• Peter Gallagher ,  as
• Stormy Weathers
• Frances McDormand ,  as
• Betty Weathers
• Robert DoQui ,  as
• Knute Willis
• Michael Beach ,  as
• Alex Trebek as

Jack Lemmon, Andie MacDowell, and Bruce Davison in Short Cuts .

Based on the work of the celebrated short story writer and poet Raymond Carver, who died of cancer at the age of 50 in 1988, Short Cuts is Robert Altman's latter day masterpiece. It's a toss up between this and Nashville as to which is the maverick director's absolute best film. Both tell seamlessly intertwined stories set in an American city featuring very large ensemble casts. Both films demonstrate the director's trademark layering of sound, and both films incorporate music into the story in a very important way. And of course, since this is Robert Altman, both films have a decidedly cynical view of humanity. Look elsewhere for happy endings.

Over the course of a few days we see the lives of no less than 22 people living in Los Angeles (Altman changed the setting from Carver's original Pacific Northwest). There is no central character, the camera simply follows various people, who are sometimes related and sometimes only very loosely connected, as they go about their daily routines. We wander in and out of their lives as they deal with issues of fidelity and death. Along the way there's some humor and songs are sung, and it ends with an earthquake.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a phone sex operator. She talks dirty while changing her baby's diapers and her husband looks on with jealousy. According to Robert Altman, Leigh spent time with real phone sex workers and came up with her own dialogue. These scenes are darkly funny but also a bit disturbing. You can't help but feel for the husband (Chris Penn), that is until we learn about his dark side later on.

Julianne Moore has one very famous scene. She plays it naked from the waist down as she argues with her husband (Matthew Modine). It's about a five minute scene and the fearless Moore seems completely comfortable the entire time (while proving she's a natural red head). Madeleine Stowe was Altman's original choice for this role but she balked at doing this scene. Ironically, the character Stowe switched to still ended up nude in the movie but only her breasts are shown.

Jack Lemmon has a very small role but he makes an impact. He plays a man who has been estranged from his son for years. He reconnects with his son's family after his grandson is hit by a car and hospitalized. His speech where he pours his heart out while his son (Bruce Davison) listens, is a masterclass in film acting. His face tells a story. Cabaret singer Annie Ross provides the voice to the soundtrack. Her smoky burnt-out vocals on these eclectic torch songs helps set the mood for the entire film, which is quiet despair.

The closest thing to a central thread in the movie is the story of this little boy (Zane Cassidy) who gets hit by a car. Altman shoots the accident in one long take. We see the boy happily running down the sidewalk. We see the car, driven by the Lily Tomlin character, pass by as the boy runs into the street without looking. The camera is behind the car and we hear the impact and see the boy fall to the street in front of the car. Still in the same take, Lily gets out and helps the boy to his feet. He insists he's alright but seems shaken and ashamed. The scene ends with him walking off alone. Zane Cassidy is outstanding in this scene. He acts so believably. It's exactly how a small boy might behave in such circumstances.

Tomlin has never been better, proving she is not just a great comic, she's also an accomplished dramatic actress. She plays a waitress married to an alcoholic limo driver played by Tom Waits. They fight and make up several times over the course of the movie. They share a great chemistry and seem like a real couple we've all met.

Robert Altman said he liked to think that he took these nine short stories (and one poem) by Raymond Carver and turned them into a novel. Gore Vidal agreed. Upon seeing Short Cuts he is supposed to have quipped, “The reason we've never read the Great American Novel is because it's a Movie.” Short Cuts isn't for everyone. It's more than 3 hours long and doesn't offer much in the way of resolution to these stories. But for anyone with a decent attention span and a healthy curiosity about the lives of others, Short Cuts is a brilliant film (although I still prefer Nashville ).

Photos © Copyright Fine Line Features (1993)

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Short Cuts (1993)

Directed by robert altman.

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