Short Cuts

Time Richard Schickel

It is, finally, as a richly pulsating, hugely entertaining human comedy -- antic, wayward, glancing -- that Short Cuts bemuses, amuses and finally entrances us. [4 Oct 1993]

USA Today Mike Clark

This definitive "life goes on" movie does what Altman does best: juggle 22 characters, deftly switch moods, and offer a comlex warts-and-all characters whose lives seem to extend beyond the screen. Few movies attempt this; Fewer succeed. [1 Oct 1993]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

The New York Times Vincent Canby

It raises the spirits not by phony sentimentality but by the amplitude of its art. From time to time, it is also roaringly funny... A terrific movie. [1 Oct 1993, p.C1]

Rolling Stone 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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Some movies can lay claim to being the best thing around in a week, a month, a year. Robert Altman's Short Cuts is closer to being one of the all-time bests, among the finest American films since the advent of sound. [22 Oct 1993]

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A rich, unnerving film, as comic as it is astringent, that in its own quiet way works up a considerable emotional charge. [8 Oct 1993]

Wall Street Journal Julie Salamon

Extraordinary...The movie has the intensity of an epic, only its subject matter is everyday life. [19 Oct 1993, p.A18(E)]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The movie equivalent of a great read. It's a masterfully conducted concert of characters...already head and shoulders above most of the competition.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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."

Austin Chronicle Louis Black

Carver's stories are obviously inspiring for Altman, and that's the point, this movie is bursting at the seams with ideas and energy.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

Film.com John Hartl

Altman lucked out when he cast a singer, Ronee Blakley, in a major role in "Nashville," but he has not been as fortunate here with Annie Ross and Lyle Lovett, who lack Blakley's soulful dramatic presence.

Empire Staff (Not Credited)

At first, it's hard to sort out who knows who and where the stories connect, but it eventually comes together, combining the gripping power of a soap opera with the skewed, unusual perspectives of Carver and Altman.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's compelling, emotionally exhausting terrain, and Altman delivers it in cold, blunt strokes. [22 Oct 1993]

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

Quirky, sometimes brilliant, and mostly ice-cold.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A daring but flawed achievement, diluting its emotional power and satirical bite with a self-consciously jagged structure, and a calculating, sometimes chilly untertone. [1 Oct 1993]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Altman shakes the camera like a two-bit horror director, and it seems a different sort of signature - less masterful than weary, less signed than resigned. Zero-sum, indeed.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

To read a Carver collection is to walk through a gallery of beautifully formed objects. To blend his stories into "soup," no matter how smartly, to see them "as just one story," is to vandalize good art, to rationalize filmic opportunism as aesthetic principle. [25 Oct 1993]

The New Yorker Terrence Rafferty

The correspondences he wants us to see from up there start to look contrived, illusory. [27 Sept 1993, p.98]

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A cynical, sexist and shallow work from cinema's premier misanthrope, Robert Altman, who here shows neither compassion for -- nor insight into -- the human condition.