Boasting direction by Robert Altman and source material
written by Raymond Carver, Short Cuts is
a movie with quite a pedigree. And it kind of has to be. Clocking in at over
three hours and following the stories of dozens of characters, Short Cuts can be a bit of an
undertaking. Put somebody like, say, Ron Howard’s name on this thing and no way
am I going to sit through it. In Altman’s hands though, such unwieldy material
ends up working pretty well. A large part of that is because he brought these
characters to life by gathering together all of the best actors of the era and giving
every one of them plenty of time to monologue, chew scenery, and basically just
show off. To go up and down the cast list praising everybody would be time
consuming and boring, but suffice to say that any movie that has Frances
McDormand, Tom Waits, and Jack
Lemmon is okay by me. And that focus scene that Lemmon gets, his story time
with his son; that thing plays like pure Jack Lemmon porn. I’ve never seen a
monologue delivered so Jack Lemmony in my entire life. Honestly, this movie
never really came together enough as a whole to be truly great, but it has
enough great performances, and enough great individual moments that I ended up
enjoying it. Even if it was a bit uneven and the three hours and some change
run time drug on after a while, it never wore out its welcome with me. And Altman
at least has sense enough to throw Julianne Moore’s bright, flaming crotch in
at just the right moment to wake you up. That thing’s like shooting a flare
into a daycare nap room.
