Magnolia - 3.5 out of 4 stars
- Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love)
- Starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, and Philip Baker Hall
Magnolia is from 1999. It is another film including a web of characters who have moments when they interact ala Crash, 21 Grams, Traffic, & Babel. This film may feature the best ensemble cast I have ever seen, not because of the names (That prize might go to The Departed), but the acting is awesome from everybody. I believed everybody's character. Coming in at just over 3 hours viewers are given a good background and understanding of each character (Not that Babel, Crash, Traffic, and 21 Grams didn't do a good job of this... Magnolia just did it first). If you look away from the screen for one second you can miss something. PTA puts a ton of little tiny clues of certain things throughout the movie such as reappearing signs with bible verses, etc. PTA always gives his movies scores that help the viewer understand the story. In Punch-Drunk love Adam Sandler plays a bipolar man and throughout that movie we hear beating drums and static over people talking which helps us understand what hes going through. In Magnolia he used this same style and I think it was a bad move. Music was constantly played over important conversations in a movie that you should know everything that's being said and going on to truly know what's happening. The performances by Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly were some of their best. The story was very entertaining and different interlocking stories brought up different emotions. Whenever the story jumped from one person to another I felt angry that the story left 1 person, yet happy that it jumped to the other person... and when the movie ended (After 3 hours) I was angry because I wanted it to keep going. The movie is about coincidence, some things are so strange and ridiculous that you say, "That would not happen!"... immediately after you say this, as if PTA is controlling the film from inside your head you will see one of those signs that he scatters throughout the movie, and the sign reads something along the lines of "But it
did happen."