‘Short Cuts’

With this rich 1993 film, as comic as it is unnerving, Robert Altman extends his boundaries from “Nashville.” The director’s co-conspirator here is the late Raymond Carver, a groundbreaking short-story writer who made his considerable reputation with 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. The result is a three-hours-plus chamber piece for 22 players, a beautiful and intricate mosaic of character and story thatexamines the greatest of all mysteries--ordinary reality. Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin (both pictured), Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Jack Lemmon, Tim Robbins and Annie Ross are among the cast’s standouts (Showtime Wednesday at 9:40 p.m.).