Sincere apologies to Larry Karaszewski, but I don’t have many fond memories of Robert Altman‘s Short Cuts (’93). I saw it 29 years ago, once, and all I remember is the faintly dreary vibes and the cast behaving in the usual eccentric, Altman-esque ways and the visual drabness and the Julianne Moore-Matthew Modine argument scene with the pubic hair and that soul-baring scene with Jack Lemmon “acting” in his usual actor-ish fashion.

I “respect” Short Cuts, of course, but there’s a reason why I haven’t re-watched it in all this time. The reason is the miserable downishness of Raymond Carver‘s short stories. If I was suddenly stuck in a Carver story or wearing the shoes of a Carver character, I would become a heroin addict.

Respectful disagreement with the late Michael Wilmington: “Short Cuts is a Los Angeles jazz rhapsody that represents Robert Altman at an all-time personal peak—and it came at just the right time in his career. For anyone who believed that what American movies needed most, after the often-moribund cinematic eighties, was more of the old Altman independent spirit and maverick brilliance — and more of a sense of what the country really is, rather than what it should be — the director’s sudden cinematic reemergence with 1992’s The Player and 1993’s Short Cuts was an occasion for bravos.”