L.A. Trilogy: 'Short Cuts', 'Grand Canyon', and 'Magnolia'

The Los Angeles Trilogy:
Much like old 1970s disaster movies, the kaleidoscope character study movie (in particular, the Los Angeles kind) is like some kind of athletic event, complete with obstacles and a huge team of players. Here are three from the 80s and 90s.


"Short Cuts" *spoilers*
Robert Altman is the master of this canvas, having commanded the multi-plot genre in the 70s, and so his interweaving L.A. stories cohere in an intelligent fashion. The performances are top notch. The movie only suffers from the excellence of some plotlines over others. A violent Chris Penn suddenly transforms into Godzilla and there's the time-consuming marital revenge of Peter Gallagher with an electric saw that seem to come out of nowhere. None of the people here are very sympathetic and most are the kind of creepy, big-city sociopaths the Heartland warns against. Fantastic acting from the Lilies, both Tomlin and Taylor, Tom Waites as an alcoholic limo driver, while Jack Lemmon and a superb Bruce Davison share the movie’s best scenes as emotionally bleeding father and son. None of the cast can disappoint too much with the Raymond Carver material, though the transplanted environment of southern California depletes the narratives of their Pacific Northwest color, and some of the actors are marooned in under-written (and unpleasant) characters, like Mattew Modine’s petulant doctor. One especially good story involving boozy jazz singer Annie Ross and her troubled daughter Lori Singer deserves its own feature length, despite an abrupt and flabby ending.


"Magnolia"
Paul Thomas Anderson’s pummeling web of L.A. stories is so manipulative in its excesses and believability and magic-trick editing that once the characters start openly weeping, the sheer length of the movie becomes more exhausting than its profound themes. Melora Waters is a standout as a drug addict, as is John C. Reilly as a bumbling cop who lacks instinct, William H. Macy as a homosexual queen with a bartender fetish, and Tom Cruise’s misogynistic TV guru, whose presentation in the movie fluctuates between cartoonish seriousness or an intentional parody of Cruise by the director, himself? Jason Robards contributes worthy support, but he, too, is sucked into Anderson’s scheme of emotionally crippled people who must sob on-camera for their sins. It all adds up to the kind of actor’s exercises too often misjudged in classrooms for emotion instead of indulgent blubbering. Anderson’s winky, heavy-handed“symbolism” is the handicap of college freshman film-makers world-wide, but on a scale this big is unforgivable.


"Grand Canyon"
Between Paul Thomas Anderson’s emoting cripples in “Magnolia” and Altman’s misanthropes in “Short Cuts”, the whiny, privileged yuppies of Lawrence Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon” are the most terrifying. Especially when they speak aloud their existential thoughts: “What is wrong with the world?” “What is it all about?” The “Look, a metaphor!” moments come so fast, even a South Central gangster participates in all the self-analysis while holding a gun. The nauseating dream sequences and flashbacks come complete with James Newton Howard’s score yuppie angst onscreen, I started believing that, Yes, white yuppie women suck. Or I experienced absurd hallucinations triggered by Kasdan’s fairy tale direction and the many plotlines crossing. Like what did a jogging Mary McDonnell find abandoned in the trash? Danny Glover in a diaper, as a rescue baby? Does this moment combine race and social commentary about hobos conveniently enough? Kevin Kline flying like Peter Pan into Mary-Louise Parker’s window for a moment of booby-gazing is a welcome departure from all the movie’s sanctimonious lessons. Steve Martin’s violent movie producer allows for one entertaining character who doesn’t undergo “Change”, but Kasdan’s camera still won’t allow him anything less than a meaning-saturated final shot.


"It looks like you could fit his future into about 6 different garbage bags." -"LHTH"