Review of Magnolia (1999) by Melvin W — 11 Aug 2012

Claudia Wilson Gator: I'll tell you everything, and you tell me everything, and maybe we can get through all the piss and shit and lies that kill other people. .

"Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours.".

Magnolia is a good example for why Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best filmmakers around. He's yet to make a bad movie, and a lot of the time, at the end of watching one of his films, I am left stunned. That's the case with Magnolia, maybe more than any other of his great movies. This a beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, film. We watch characters and their personal lives intersect. At first, we don't know how these different stories relate, but slowly Anderson brings them together. You know a movie is amazing when just over 3 hours of runtime feels quick.

We see the lives of different people intersect and the movie comes to an unforgettable end. The people who's lives we see are a child on a gameshow, a gameshow host that just found out he has cancer, the daughter of the gameshow host is a cocaine addict, and a cop. Also there is a dying old man, his much younger wife, a caregiver, and a guy who teaches men how to fuck any woman they want to. .

This is an extremely emotional film and there are a wide array of subjects touched in Anderson's amazing script. Addiction, guilt, forgiveness, and love happen to be some of the biggest. Everything is handled with such care, that every single thing Anderson is trying to present comes across in a clear and precise way, but without being too in your face obvious. .

Magnolia is an absolute masterpiece. Its length may be a turn off for some people, but it is a film worth sitting through. There's nothing hard about watching it either. I was never bored and for a movie that runs 3 hours; that is a rarity. This is visionary filmmaking from one of the best around right now. There's a huge cast with big names like Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, Philip Baker Hall, William H. Macy, and John C. Reilly. All of them, plus a variety of others give flawless performances. Cruise, Macy, and Reilly are my standouts. I don't care what your opinion of Tom Cruise is; his performance in this is ridiculously good.

Like every PTA film, this is a must watch. Anderson calls it his best film and who am I to disagree with him. There Will Be Blood, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love; they're all great. Punch Drunk Love is one of my absolute favorite movies ever. There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights, both masterpieces. But Magnolia is a movie that is just something else entirely. Describing what that is, is just about impossible.