Short Cuts

Plot synopsis:
A fleet of helicopters sprays for medflies, revealing all the characters along the path of their flight. Dr. Ralph Wyman and his wife, Marian, meet another couple, Stuart and Claire Kane, at Zoe Trainer's cello concert and make a spontaneous Sunday dinner date. Marian's sister Sherri is married to philandering cop Gene, who makes up unbelievable stories to hide his affair with Betty Weathers. Betty is in the process of divorcing one of the helicopter pilots, Stormy. Waitress Doreen Piggot is married to an alcoholic limo driver named Earl. TV commentator Howard Finnigan lives with his wife Anne and their young son, next door to Zoe and her mother, cabaret singer Tess Trainer. Their pool cleaner is Jerry Kaiser, whose wife, Lois, works from home as a phone sex operator, tending to the children while she talks off strange men. Jerry and Lois are friends with Doreen's daughter Honey and her husband Bill, who works as a makeup artist.
The day before Casey Finnigan's 8th birthday, Doreen hits him with her car as he's running to school. Casey appears fine, and refuses Doreen's offer of a ride home, because she is a stranger. His mother comes home from ordering his birthday cake to find Casey slumped lethargically on the couch. Howard convinces her to take Casey to the hospital, where he remains unconscious. The baker calls the next day to inform Ann that the cake is ready, but Howard, wanting to keep the line free, briskly ends the conversation. The baker immediately calls back, incensed at being hung up on. While the Finnigans maintain their vigil, the baker continues to call and harass the couple. Howard's estranged father turns up at the hospital and recalls that Casey's hospitalization is reminiscent of the day that Howard was in an auto accident as a boy. When Howard's mother went to her sister's house, she found her in bed with her husband, whom she had seduced. That led to the estrangement between father and son.
Stuart and his two friends, Gordon and Vern, harass Doreen at the diner before they head out on their three-day fishing trip. On the first day, they find a young woman's body submerged near some rocks. After some debate, they decide to tie her to the rocks, continue fishing, and report the body when they are done. When he comes home, Stuart eventually admits to Claire what they had done, and she is disgusted that they could fish for days with the woman's body nearby. The body is identified as a 23-year-old woman, and Claire visits the funeral home out of a sense of guilt.
Stormy visits Betty's house, ostensibly to pick up his mother's clock, but instead, he spends the day destroying her belongings. Bill and Honey entertain themselves in the apartment that they are watching while its owners are on vacation by taking some pictures of Honey where Bill has made her up to look like she has been brutally beaten. Gene abandons the family dog on a strange street because he cannot endure its barking, but after several days of his distraught children's inquiries, he returns to the neighborhood and retrieves the dog, who had been picked up by Vern's family. The Wymans get into a massive argument just before their dinner party with the Kanes. Marian admits to sleeping with another man. Both couples alleviate their stress by drinking heavily, and the party lasts all night long.
One day, Casey's eyes begin to flutter. Ann's excitement grows, but just as he appears to be fully waking, he suddenly dies. Seeing this and being overwhelmed, Howard's father, Paul Finnigan, leaves the hospital while the distraught couple returns home and informs Zoe of Casey's death. The next day, they go to the bakery to shame the baker over his abuse of them. When he learns why they never picked up the cake, he asks them to stay and gives them baked goods. Zoe, worn to the breaking point by her mother's alcoholism and her isolation, commits suicide by starting a car engine inside her garage, playing the cello as she asphyxiates. Later that day, her mother discovers that Zoe is dead and is bewildered.
When Honey picks up the pictures from the developer, they are mixed up with Gordon's. Gordon is horrified to see the pictures of Honey beaten so badly, while she is horrified by the pictures he took of the submerged body on his fishing trip. They each walk away from each other memorizing the other person's license plates. Honey and Bill are on their way to a picnic with Jerry and Lois. In the park, Jerry and Bill try to rape two young women they encountered earlier, and Bill quickly makes an excuse to divvy up into couples. As he and one of the girls walk away from Jerry and the other, they hear her scream. They turn around to see Jerry hitting her in the head with a rock, just as a major earthquake strikes. In the aftermath, Jerry's murder of the girl is attributed to a falling rock during the earthquake.

Tags: comedy, humor, murder

Review:
Robert Altman has never shied away from casting every actor known to mankind in his films, and this is certainly true with his 1993 film "Short Cuts", a film set in Los Angeles over the course of a couple of days.
In terms of primary actors, ones that had a substantial enough part to merit a supporting tag, I count at least 22; but more impressive than the sheer number of the cast is the fact that the film does not suffer from character overload, nor do their intertwining stories (and they are all separated by no more than one or two degrees).I started this review by going through each character and the story each brings to the table, but after about three paragraphs worth of explanation, it is clear that it is not only a bad idea, but probably counterproductive to the review itself.
Andie MacDowell, though not quite as insipid as usual, is still pretty bad, but gems like Lyle Lovett, Peter Gallagher, Tom Waits (who I am really biased toward) and a fairly fresh and new Julianne Moore more than make up for any minor acting mishaps.There are not many films that are so involved that I simply throw up my hands at the prospect of doing my standard summary review for them, but "Short Cuts" is one of them.
Robert Altman's Short Cuts weaves all these disconnected scenes together like common strands of rope.
This style works very well indeed and at the end of the film, miraculously you are left not with the impression of having just watched a series of 'short cuts', but something entirely more holistic in nature.There was not a false note in the acting and the star-studded cast did great justice to a remarkable script.
Well, I've watched this film about seven times now, and I feel quite certain that I can add it to the list of my favorite films alongside Dr. Strangelove and The Red, White and Blue Trilogy.The casting is flawless, with fantastic performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianne Moore, Peter Gallagher, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey, Jr. and many (I mean *many*) more.
The characters aren't completely real - in an 'I-can-relate-to-these-people' sense (I never expected this from this movie anyway), but are presented in a slightly hyperreal sense with Altman highlighting the everyday lives of characters who try valiantly to maintain their public personas (cutting across class boundaries in the process), even when things are spinning out of control beneath the surface (literally symbolized by the ending, though at least he didn't stoop to throwing in a rain of frogs...).
- all they do is snort coke and talk." The irony in such nastiness becomes a bit more apparent when you consider where that assessment is coming from, within Altman's tragi-comic variant upon the notion that California's trends become America's truisms a decade or two down the road.There are so many great moments here - Chris Penn's growing befuddlement (and seething, simmering murderous anger) with his wife's phone sex operator job; Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin as a boozy working class couple; Peter Gallagher and Frances MacDormand's marriage, collapsed into tantrums and furniture vandalism; the Tim Robbins/Huey Lewis confrontation; Jack Lemmon, Julianne Moore and Matthew Modine all deliver strikingly memorable performances.
The day-to-day lives of a number of suburban Los Angeles residents.In many ways, this film is a follow-up to Altman's "Nashville", another story of several people (twenty-four) going about their day in Nashville.
Featuring an all-star cast featuring a host of great character actors including Tim Robins, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh to name a few.The performances are wonderful without exception (even Andie McDowell does OK).
I know that this is often on critic's top-ten lists but I felt that interesting stories and great acting do not make up for the lack of an emotional centre to the film.
Altman took a series of Raymond Carver's most masterful stories (and one poem, I believe), made them into short films with some terrific actors, chopped each film into 30 second clips and threw them in a blender so they werecompletely out of sequence.
The stories/chapters themselves would probably have been fine if theyhad been left as individual segments (to attempt a little cohesion betweenstories, some of Carver's separate characters were fused into one--Lily Tomlin who plays the wife in "They're Not You're Husband" is also the woman who hits the little boy with her car in "A Small Good Thing"--why Altman then chose to destroy narrative cohesion WITHIN the stories is beyond me), but with so much going on simultaneously, it's impossible to follow.
It's amazing to me that a movie combining several of my favorite things in the world- -Raymond Carver, Tom Waits, Lily Tomlin and a clown--could be so bad!Another IMDB user commented that the movie seemed more like a big party forthe actors then something the viewer can appreciate and this seems to me to be a very apt point..
After seeing Short Cuts and pondering over it as a cinematic experience, I feel a strange feeling that I haven't had before with any Robert Altman film: confusion.
Normally, understanding that Altman's style is one of using confusion and misunderstandings to move the plot along, I was surprised when I reacted so positively to MASH, Nashville and The Player but not this.The cast, overall, is quite good with Robert Downey Jr. and Madeline Stowe giving the best performances along with the great Jack Lemmon in perhaps the scene with the only real emotional pull as he describes the sad truth of why his family broke apart.
Even one plot line involving Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell that should have had great emotional depth has almost none to speak of.I have the greatest admiration for Altman and his ambitious vision of how to create interesting stories and characters.
Carver's stories are compact and carry an incredible emotional impact and honesty, Altman replaces the details from the originals with some c**p from his own, less fertile, less insightful imagination and somehow loses all of their impact in the process.It was a treat seeing Annie Ross, but still, just thinking about this movie makes me angry.
Although it joins two expert craftsmen -- Robert Altman and the short story writer Raymond Carver -- "Short Cuts" is more of a disappointment than a success.
I feel neutral or positive things about other Altman films, and Raymond Carver in print, which is nothing like this..
Like most Altman films -- Short Cuts has a voyeuristic feel to it.
Altman, at his best, had no need of a single narrative line and on those occasions in which there is no semblance whatsoever of a single story arc AND he is moving at his best, he creates films quite unlike any other by any one.Both this and Nashville are invitations, seductive in their own way: there is no fourth wall in these works, while we watch them, it is as if they are watching us..
"Short Cuts" is a plot-less film with an ensemble cast; many different stories woven into one.
The legendary underdog Robert Altman, who directed and co-wrote here, based this off of Raymond Carver's short stories, but really turned it into his own unique peek into the lives of these southern Californians.
One of the most remarkable aspects of "Short Cuts" is how it's so much like real life with all its randomness and interruptions, about as close as any movie can come.
The blaring television in the background serves as but one reoccurring theme, just a tool that helps make this an authentic story of American life.I was reminded of certain other films while watching this, such as Richard Linklater's plot-less low-budget cult hit "Slacker" from 1991, a movie about eccentric characters in Austin, TX and their criss-crossing lives, shifting from one little story to the next.
So, instead of separate short stories, we get them connected, and that changes them, not always in a good way, but instead making the whole thing feel like a soap opera.My advise remains: Do not try to look for a storyline, because there isn't one.
Excellent movie with incredible cast (10+ good actors)This is a 'slice of life' style movie telling the lives of several people in Los Angles.Very good performances by every one and the film possess a great sense of humour.recommended.
One IMDb reviewer writes: "...(Altman) weaves all these disconnected scenes together like common strands of rope." (As crudely as the film is edited, however, I think a plate of linguine would be a better simile)Another writes: "the ending doesn't disappoint," (er...
Short Cuts, one of the best films I've ever seen, is a tableau, a framework that goes over the differing but similar threads of the human condition like it's as natural as can be.
But it's just in seeing what goes on between these couple dozen or so people in Los Angeles- the desperation, the grief, the momentary lapse of reason, the infidelities, hatred, love, all strung together seamlessly, and with the knowledge that the absurdities (and there are many subtle and strange in the three-hour-plus running time) it's got something for everyone.The cast is ranged from Hollywood professionals, a couple of legends, character actors, Altman regulars, musicians, and it all clicks just right.
Maverick director Robert Altman and acclaimed short story writer Raymond Carver prove to be perfectly matched in this, one of Altman's very best films.Altman takes a series of Carver stories, transplants them from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles, and interweaves them into one meandering (but in a good way) narrative about people trying to navigate the tricky waters of this thing called life.
I can see why people would be turned off by it, because it is awfully bleak, but I think it's a fascinating film, made so by Altman's fantastic direction and the sensational work of the entire ensemble cast.It's impossible and unnecessary to single any one actor out, since all of them are top notch and the movie is the sum of its parts.
Easy like Woody Allen's funny but thoughtful movies.The cuts are great, you'll never ever realize that you're watching a 3 hours movie (unless you're watching a clock too).Yes, it is Robert Altman's best movie.
Could it be that the reviewers who are disappointed with this film because various plot 'resolutions' failed to occur, there was a lack of character 'insight' and that distressing scenes weren't removed (e.g. the fishing trip guys finding the corpse) and so on is that they're expecting the film to conform to the mainstream Hollywood formula (perhaps because that's the diet on which they were raised)?In my humble opinion, films like this are truer reflections and commentaries of the world in which I live: sometimes people don't change, often questions just aren't answered, unpleasant things *can* happen.
The typeface of its opening credits may look unprepossessing to today's eyes, but Robert Altman's portmanteau Los Angeles satire, inspired by Raymond Carver's short stories, retains its abiding allure by presenting a social microcosm weaving through 22 principle characters, among them are eight white heterosexual couples (Altman is Hollywood's old guard, so diversity and inclusivity are apparently not his forte), one pair is from a prior generation and the rest are 30/40-somethings married/divorced with or without kids, plus an addition of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship.Normalcy on the placid surface is disrupted in the opening sequence where helicopters are crop-dusting over an outlandish medfly quarantine area where our protagonists live, and is further overturned by coursing undertows where streams of (mostly negative) sentiments (displeasure, discomfort, jealousy, contempt, neurosis, paranoia, miscommunication, miscomprehension, ill feeling, among others) are simmering, festering and transmuting into accidents, betrayal, suicide, murder, bereavement but also fence-mending and merriment, as life it is.Naturally, our most worrisome concern is the safety of Howard and Ann Finnigan's son, who is hit by a car driven by waitress Doreen Piggot (Tomlin), after ostensibly looking fine and refusing Doreen's request to take him to his parents, he soon falls to a portentous coma in the hospital, which puts Ann (MacDowell) and Howard (Davison), a famous TV commentator through an excruciating wringer, aggravated by the incessant crank calls from a grievance-driven baker Mr. Bitkower (Lovett) and the unbidden visit of Howard's estranged father Paul (Lemmon).The doctor who treats the boy in the hospital is Ralph Wyman (Modine), whose wife Marian (Moore) is a painter, they live in a posh residence on the hill with a panoptic view of the area, but Ralph is bedeviled by a persisting idea that Marian has cheated on him.
Robert Altman was a master director and it is great that with the advent of the internet the new generation can know and watch films of his that they would never have gotten an opportunity otherwise.
Robert Altman was a master director and it is great that with the advent of the internet the new generation can know and watch films of his that they would never have gotten an opportunity otherwise.
Short cuts, much like most of his films is an ensemble piece featuring top notch actors playing distinct characters in the city of Los Angeles.
Short cuts, much like most of his films is an ensemble piece featuring top notch actors playing distinct characters in the city of Los Angeles.
The different narratives are spliced together so that they keep close together chronologically, no small feat even given that every event depicted in the film takes place in Los Angeles over the course of the same two or three days and culminates with the same event.A work like Short Cuts isn't meant to convey a traditional plot with a beginning, middle, and end; rather, it's meant to offer a glimpse into the lives of several characters from various walks of life.
Altman and his film take very few short cuts to anywhere at all, his film is just as interested in the catalysts of life that drive us to where we end up as it is the intricacies that unfold around these events with others we may already know.
The film goes on to flit from a pool cleaner named Jerry Kaiser, played by Chris Penn; to a limousine driver Tom Waits' Earl Piggot; to Robert Downey Jr.'s layabout Bill Bush whom takes a swig from a beer can during breakfast as well as a large proportion of others all mingling in and around what appears to be an individual block.To list every actor or actress and their role would be beside the point, needless to say, the film isn't so much preoccupied with the gimmick that their lives and existences should become entwined, as much as it is the thematics of each of their tales that are eerily similar to everyone else's; the overlying idea that regardless of age; gender; marital situation or class distinction: death, or loss, affects us all and the ingredient of deconstructing these characters' attitudes towards sex or love keeps the film on that so-called path seeing it explore the two things humankind is apparently so fascinated by - the thesis or pitch makes the film sound terribly self-important; it is, in actuality, anything but.
Short Cuts is expertly acted; wonderfully directed by a man flitting between an array of varying people with different problems linked by a common thematic and remarkably paced for a film of its length – certainly worth seeing..
You have Andie MacDowell, Bruce Davison, Jack Lemmon, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Anne Archer, Fred Ward, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Penn, Lili Taylor, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Tim Robbins, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits, Frances McDormand, Peter Gallagher, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Lyle Lovett, Huey Lewis, Robert DoQui, the list goes on and only a couple of the characters this entire list play are sympathetic or likable to some degree.
Brilliant.Directed by Robert Altman and based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver, the movie has many different sets of characters, each with their own problems and stories.
These stories seem unrelated and running parallel to one another but eventually they all connect, and when they do its in interesting, and sometimes tragic, ways.A very clever, sensitive movie that explores how lives of strangers are connected, and really all of us are connected.Deftly directed by Robert Altman.
It would be useless to try to touch on all of the different plot threads so I'll just say that they deal with life, love, lies & loss (among other things).The cast is fully stocked with talented individuals like Julianne Moore, Frances McDormand, Tim Robbins, Jack Lemmon, Robert Downey Jr, and the list goes on.
I always loved such films with multiple characters, like God watching over the world, you yearn to find out what the other people are doing at that very moment.
This film is part of my video collection.I know many people don't love this film (my wife included), yet I am always blown away by it.It is a long film which never exhausts me and leaves me wanting more,furthermore, it does leave me with a wonderful feeling, despite some of its stories tragic conclusions.This is credit to the movie's structure.It is a series of cross sections from many characters lives, with entertaining coincidences.What I love is Altman's visual coincidences tying the multitude of stories together (images on TV,sign posts, ect.) He is the master of multiple things occurring simultaneously (such as dialogue) and stories occurring simultaneously.Wonderful to watch..
Short Cuts is 3 hours long, just like Magnolia.
Short Cuts is about different stories that take place during a period of 48 hours in Los Angeles, kind of like Magnolia.
Only here are the better reasons why to see Short Cuts and completely avoid Magnolia:1.) Better Stories; More Characters that are actually Interesting.
"Short Cuts" seems like the sort of movie that would split even Robert Altman's hard-core fans.
But as for Short Cuts, it felt to me like Altman had run out of ideas and had to revert to the structure of his best film.