their emotions. See this film. You will not regret it. I have my fingers crossed for a special edition DVD of Short Cuts.

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... . Los Angeles is famously mocked as a place that's all surface and no depth see ANNIE HALL , and the slight exaggerations seen here characters plays with this, even as the isolation and instability of certain characters humanizes them. Through it all there's plenty of humor - though, as is usual with Altman, even the humor packs a wallop. Annie Ross' deadpan complaint gets to the heart of it all: "I hate L.A. - 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. Every time I watch this, I get something new out of it - though it requires a bit of patience, SHORT CUTS is really worth checking out.

trail-blazed. It's odd, because had I seen "Short Cuts" before I viewed P.T. Anderson's "Magnolia" which I loved upon first view but not so much the second time around , I would've realized that film was an eerie knockoff of this Altman classic--right down to the casting of Julianne Moore and Jack Lemmon. "Magnolia" is full of nervousness, operatic melodrama, and ham-fisted symbolism, whereas "Short Cuts" is full of smooth transitions, hyper-realism, and keen insights into human behavior. I'll take the earthquake at the end of "Short Cuts" over the raining frogs of "Magnolia" any day. Altman's film runs well over three hours and features nearly twenty main characters. As such, it's one of those movies where everyone will have their personal favorite bits and characters. I found Lori Singer's cello playing daughter of a booze-hound jazz singer, Anne Archer's empathy riddled clown, and Frances McDormand's young son who insists on telling everyone about how he feels about his toys which are showered on him in the absence of real love though no one ever pays him any direct attention, to be the most compelling. There's also some great bits involving a dog and Tim Robbin's adulterous cop, and a hilariously disturbing mix up at a photo hut involving Lilly Taylor and a fisherman. With Mr. Altman now passed, one wonders, will anyone ever be able to make a film like this again? Surely not. "Short Cuts" is nothing short of a masterpiece and a testament to Altman's unique brand of film-making and humanistic view of the misanthropic world he inhabited.

mountains of takes, and then weaves it all together. The life of the film emerges from the actors. Then Altman takes that motion, those rhythms and plays them against one another. It is as close as one can get to cinematic jazz, at least jazz from actors.P T Anderson is first a writer. His primary creation is the script. So while `Magnolia' bears some superficial resemblance to `Short Cuts.' it is a completely different beast. Chamber music compared to jazz. A more apt comparison is to `The Thin Red Line,' which works with the same sort of jazz weave, except the focus in `Line' is on remembrances through sounds and voiceovers. Here the focus is on the immediate miniensembles.This is quite simply one of the most important films of the decade.It must be sort of a Rorschach test to report which characters impressed the most. In terms of the character for me it was Lori Singer's character. Strange. She really is playing the cello, and with passion. She really is playing something `totally, absolutely real, but not.' But her career otherwise seems to not have taken off.Moore and Downey are among the best actors alive, and it really shows. Robbins, McDormand and Leigh sometimes are extraordinarily great, but not so here -- they apparently need guidance. Tomlin and Waits are a gas. What fun. My only complaint is that sometimes Altman puts together shockingly long and complex tracking shots, and they are missing here. They would detract from the players.

offer. Easily Altman's masterpiece and some of the best work from many of the illustrious cast. This film stands pretty much alone--Only thing it really reminds me of is Maupin's 'Tales of the City'. All in all Shortcuts still resonates and the helicopter-armada/earthquake elements give it that end-times feel which makes this movie somewhat eerily prophetic at times.

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. "Short Cuts" is simply about human relationships, all of which seem to be completely unhealthy. The beauty of Altman's script and direction is that this isn't imminently apparent in all cases. Something as subtle as a sigh and a minor roll of the eyes speaks volumes in a film this well done. The acting in the film is, to be expected, great in most cases. 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. The script is compelling enough to easily sit through all 187 minutes of the film, the ending doesn't disappoint, and the film contains a cool jazz score. If you're a fan of ensemble films, this should be on your list. If you're an Altman fan, this should be on your short list because I consider it to be one of his best. 8/10 --Shelly

Jason Leigh playing a phone sex operator with a sexually repressed husband and Tom Waits playing a boozy limousine driver.Typical of Altman, "Cuts" sports a jazzy atmosphere, Altman's plot weaving in and out, his actors improvising, his story lethargically told. With several arguments, accidents, corpses and tales of infidelity, the film makes all the usual points about chance, fate, abandonment, love and loss, but upon closer inspection, there's some deeper stuff going on as well.For example, when one character returns home from a visit to the bakers to buy a cake , she finds that her television has been left on. She turns the TV off but is then startled to find her son, Casey, sitting on the couch. The kid's just been hit by a car. This sequence is repeated later on when another woman gets out of the shower and likewise finds her television on. She's then startled to find her son, Chad, on the floor eating cake . He's at home because he's been abandoned by his father. Two scenes, each with the following elements: cake, bakery, televisions, baby shower, a literal shower, mothers returning home and finding their sons.The positioning of both women and their gestures as they turn their TVs off only to find their sons who shouldn't be home , are identical. These scenes are further linked by an angry Tim Robbins kicking out the family dog whilst his wife frets that her baby the dog might get hit by a car. The abandonment of the dog anticipates the abandonment of Chad. The threat of the dog being run over, anticipates the running over of Casey.But there's a further relationship between Chad and Casey. Chad's father, a respectable news reporter, was himself abandoned by his father as a child on his birthday. And Casey's father and Chad's father are further linked by the fact that one reports the other's news. Likewise, Doreen, the woman who hits Casey with her car, serves Chad in her bar the next day.Not only are the character's lives affected by coincidence and chance, but they represent one another in different circumstances. The film is a giant "what if?". Taken apart, the stories are relatively insignificant. It is only when we interact one scene with another, that meaning is found. It is this play of difference that makes "Short Cuts" so rich. Meaning is found only in relation and opposition to something else. But what's more, it's the audience's responsibility to make all the film's connections. To find the short cuts between one point and another.When Altman has a character played by Julianne Moore say "I think they're about seeing and the responsibility that goes with it" when speaking about her art, he's communicating directly to his audience. "Short Cuts" knows the world is simply too big to talk about. Too vast, limitless, filled with infinite possibilities and masses upon masses of intercontextual layers. The world is rife with association, movement, meetings upon meetings. Put the world under a microscope and "Short Cuts" is what you get. Seemingly random but ultimately not. At the same time, it is about all the associations that we miss in life. Upon first viewing, the stories are all disconnected and only superficially linked. It's our responsibility to see beyond the superficial.9/10 - Long before "Short Cuts", Altman's films anticipated the mosaic-like plots of similar films by the likes of Anderson, Sayles, Haggis, Kasdan etc. He's still the undisputed master of this sort of stuff, though. Worth multiple viewings.

amazing, too.