Minus the critical acclaim, buzz, influence over films like Magnolia, Short Cuts, on its own, is a mediocre movie. Despite the best efforts of around a dozen talented actors and a director who obviously knows his stuff, Robert Altman, this movie is an exercise in redundancy and misery. Many of the stories fail to make a worthy case as to why they need to be told in a movie.However, Short Cuts has a few scenes so brilliant and affecting that they are worth the rental (or purchase price) alone. The intersecting storylines tell a story about a group of fishermen who discover a dead body, a grieving family (Andie MacDowell), a married couple with skeletons in the closet (Julianne Moore and Matthew Modine) a drunkard and his waitress girlfriend (Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin), a depressed cellist (Lori Singer) a philandering cop with a wife and family back home (Tim Robbins and Madeleine Stowe) and a sketchy make-up artist and his girlfriend (Robert Downey Jr. and Lily Taylor).The incredible number of stories and stars may seem mind-boggling, but it's the least of the film's problems. In fact the strong acting and richness of the collective stories are the film's high point.All the actors are great in one way or another, but Julianne Moore's performance is stunning. Jack Lemmon is similarly incredible. These two have to be seen to be believed.However, with so many stories, all of them won't measure up to high quality. Short Cuts main problem is that a whole lot don't measure up. By the way, there's a lot of nudity in this film, profanity, sex, and overall depressing material.