‘Short Cuts’

With this rich 1993 film, as comic as it is unnerving, Robert Altman builds on what has gone before--notably “Nashville” (see this issue’s Four-Star Film review)--yet extends outward to new boundaries. Altman’s co-conspirator here is the late Raymond Carver, a groundbreaking short-story writer who made his considerable reputation with beautifully compressed, unadorned tales of life among the blue-collar classes. Altman and co-screenwriter Frank Barhydt based their script on nine of Carver’s stories plus a prose poem, expanding Carver’s world while remaining true to its spirit. The result is a three-hours-plus chamber piece for 22 players, a beautiful and intricate mosaic of character and incident that examines the greatest of all mysteries--ordinary reality. Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore (both pictured), Lily Tomlin, Jack Lemmon, Tim Robbins and Annie Ross are among the cast’s standouts (TMC Sunday at 8 p.m., Showtime early Wednesday at 1:15 a.m., TMC Friday at 9 p.m.).