short cuts

Director: robert altman

Actor: andie macdowell,julianne moore,tim robbins,bruce davison

Data Published: Fri Oct 01 1993

Genres: Comedy,Drama

Key Words: waitress,destruction of property,female full rear nudity,marriage crisis,cheating husband

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108122/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Cuts

Description: Short Cuts is a movie starring Andie MacDowell, Julianne Moore, and Tim Robbins. The day-to-day lives of several suburban Los Angeles residents.

Plot: A fleet of helicopters sprays for medflies and reveals all the characters along the path of their flight. Dr. Ralph Wyman and his wife, Marian, meet another couple, Stuart and Claire Kane, at Zoe Trainer's cello concert and make a spontaneous Sunday dinner date. Marian's sister, Sherri, is married to philandering cop Gene, who invents unbelievable stories to hide his affair with Betty Weathers. Betty is in the process of divorcing one of the helicopter pilots, Stormy. Waitress Doreen Piggot is married to an alcoholic limo driver, Earl. Television commentator Howard Finnigan lives with his wife, Anne, and their young son, Casey, next door to Zoe and her mother, cabaret singer Tess. Their pool cleaner is Jerry Kaiser, whose wife, Lois, works from home as a phone sex operator by tending to the children while she talks off strange men. Jerry and Lois are friends with Doreen's daughter, Honey, and her husband, Bill, who works as a makeup artist. The day before the eighth birthday of Casey, Doreen hits him with her car as he is running to school. Casey appears fine and refuses Doreen's offer of a ride home, as she is a stranger. His mother comes home from ordering his birthday cake to find him slumped lethargically on the couch. Howard convinces her to take Casey to the hospital, where he remains unconscious. The baker calls the next day to inform Ann that the cake is ready, but Howard, wanting to keep the line free, briskly ends the conversation. The baker immediately calls back, incensed at being hung up on. While the Finnigans maintain their vigil, the baker continues to call and harass the couple. Howard's estranged father turns up at the hospital and recalls that Casey's hospitalization reminds him of the day that Howard was in a car accident as a boy. When Howard's mother went to her sister's house, she found her in bed with her husband, whom she had seduced. That led to the estrangement between father and son. Stuart and his two friends, Gordon and Vern, harass Doreen at the diner before they head out on their three-day fishing trip. On the first day, they find a young woman's body, submerged near some rocks. After some debate, they decide to tie her to the rocks, continue fishing, and report the body when they are done. When he comes home, Stuart eventually admits to Claire what they had done, and she is disgusted that they could fish for days with the woman's body nearby. The body is identified as a 23-year-old woman, and Claire visits the funeral home out of a sense of guilt. Stormy visits Betty's house, ostensibly to pick up his mother's clock but instead spends the day destroying her belongings. Bill and Honey entertain themselves in the apartment that they are watching while its owners are on vacation by taking some pictures of Honey in which Bill has made her up to look as if she were brutally beaten. Gene abandons the family dog on a strange street because he cannot endure its barking, but after several days of his distraught children's inquiries, he returns to the neighbourhood and retrieves the dog, who had been picked up by Vern's family. The Wymans get into a massive argument just before their dinner party with the Kanes. Marian admits to an affair. Both couples alleviate their stress by drinking heavily, and the party lasts all night long. One day, Casey's eyes begin to flutter. Ann's excitement grows, but just as he appears to be fully waking, he suddenly dies. Seeing that and being overwhelmed, Howard's father, Paul, leaves the hospital while the distraught couple returns home and informs Zoe of Casey's death. The next day, they go to the bakery to shame the baker over his abuse of them. When he learns why they never picked up the cake, he asks them to stay and gives them baked goods. Zoe, worn to the breaking point by her mother's alcoholism and her isolation, commits suicide by starting a car engine inside her garage; she plays the cello as she asphyxiates. Later that day, her mother discovers Zoe's death and is bewildered. When Honey picks up the pictures from the developer, they are mixed up with Gordon's. He is horrified to see the pictures of Honey, who is apparently beaten so badly, and she is horrified by the pictures Gordon took of the submerged body on his fishing trip. They walk away from each other, memorizing each other's license plates. Honey and Bill are on their way to a picnic with Jerry and Lois. In the park, Jerry and Bill try to rape two young women they encountered earlier, and Bill quickly makes an excuse to divvy up into couples. As he and one of the girls walk away from Jerry and the other girl, they hear her scream. They turn around to see Jerry hitting her in the head with a rock, just as a major earthquake strikes. In the aftermath, Jerry's murder of the girl is attributed to a falling rock during the earthquake.