Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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. All are connected- some literally, all thematically. This is a great piece by a master and it inspired many filmmakers, among others PT Anderson. Go watch it now.

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. How many characters are in this story of folks in Los Angeles? Probably about the same.If anything, this story strikes me as better. Better scripted, for sure, and with much more mystery and suspense (and more dead bodies). We have an incredible cast: Tom Waits and Jennifer Jason Leigh steal the show, but Robert Downey, Tim Robbins, Chris Penn and a dozen others are amazing, too.

"Short Cuts" is made up of a number of Raymond Carver's brilliant short stories. Although Carver wrote them as separate stories, in the film they are linked in clever and unexpected ways.I was surprised to learn that a number of reviewers criticised Altman's tone, and the fragmentation the stories underwent to create the script. However, I think it shows his genius in pulling the stories together to make a continuous narrative.The film opens as helicopters spray Los Angeles to eradicate Medfly. As the helicopters pass over the city, the camera zooms down and selects a number of people from the millions below. The lives of these people are brought into sharp focus, allowing the audience to share their pain, secrets and desires. Self-absorption is a trait shared by many of the characters; they appear to be concerned only with themselves. Even when they learn that terrible things have happened to others, their reactions are often superficial and unaffected.Altman has been criticised for having too cynical an attitude towards the characters, anticipating their failure in a way that Carver did not in his stories. However, a number of the characters in the film grow though adversity and many of them are basically good people.Of them all, it is the highway patrolman played by Tim Robbins, the character who seemed to have the least chance of redemption, who undergoes the most dramatic transformation.Neighbourhood watch takes on a new meaning when neighbours ask a couple played by Lili Taylor and Robert Downey Jnr, to mind their apartment, but they move in, throwing parties and having sex in the bed.Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a phone sex worker who deals with her client's calls while she feeds her baby, however she is never in the mood for sex with her husband played by Chris Penn. His repressed feelings erupt in the film's most disturbing sequence.It almost seems reasonable when three guys on a fishing trip decide not to report a dead body until after they have finished fishing. Later, the morality of their decision becomes an issue.Much of the film centres on two families who live side by side. Bruce Davidson and Andie McDowell play the Finnigans whose eleven-year-old son, Casey, is in hospital after being hit by a car. Before the accident, Mrs Finnigan goes to a bakery to organise a cake for her son's birthday. The baker, played by Lyle Lovett, becomes enmeshed in their lives in an unexpected way.Tess and Zoe played by Annie Ross and Lori Singer live next door to the Finnigans. They each react differently to Casey's accident but it leads to a tragedy just as great. Tess and Zoe are the only characters not drawn from Carver's stories.Jack Lemmon plays Howard Finnigan's father. It's a role filled with regret for past actions and lost opportunities.The structure of "Short Cuts" is not unlike Paul Anderson's later "Magnolia". Both have multiple, intersecting story lines. The similarities become more marked when towards the end of "Short Cuts", an earthquake intercedes as does the rain of frogs in Magnolia. However, the earthquake doesn't change the course of the characters lives or provide redemption. The film ends leaving the characters to deal with their lives as best they can.Altman couldn't always pull off a masterpiece as Prêt-à-Porter proved, but he came pretty close with this compelling movie.

Altman, as many have written, had a career that is pretty much evenly divided between hit and miss. While I have always enjoyed his films, to be totally honest and fair, not all of his work qualifies to the magnificent high standard of being Altmanesque.Altman loved jazz, and the best of his best work move like a brilliant jazz performance. To move along with his groove, to truly become part of the experience requires a certain presence of mind. Like the greatest jazz artists, there are those who enter into deep debates over which work is best: is Kind Of Blue better than Bitches Brew? More important? In the end, it does come down to taste and preference, and this would be my second favorite Altman film after the sheer perfection of Nashville. The films are like watching someone make a quilt, "bit by bit, putting it together" (as Sondheim said), with no one particular thread being more important than another, just a simple, glorious collection of threads pulling together to form one majestic piece.The perception that his films are "scattered" or "confusing" or "dull" because of that missing story line is, sadly, understandable: we are being fed a constant stream of Single Story at every turn, being easier to market and exploit. 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.