Review of Magnolia (1999) by Kevin M — 09 Mar 2013
This is a wildly great, if lengthy film of films directed by the great Paul Thomas Anderson. Clocking in at 3 hours and 8 minutes, you would expect there to be plenty of scenes that should have been cut; but no, many could have been cut but none of them should have been.
The premise is pretty much a bunch of extremely dramatic stories thrown into one film, and they are all very interesting. The stories are only made better by the incredible performances driving them: it is excruciatingly rare for a film to have this many universally amazing performances.
The best of them all would have to be Tom Cruise as an eccentric motivational speaker, who slowly unravels into the most broken of men in a single two-minute scene between him and his father. This is by far the best performance I've ever seen Cruise pull off.
The film is overflowing with meaning and metaphor, and I think it would be impossible to fully understand and take everything in the first time around; after all, it's a three-hour film. Magnolia demands repeated viewings and is propelled by a hugely successful set of performances, a nice soundtrack, original writing, and genuinely interesting stories.
This review of Magnolia (1999) was written by Kevin M on 09 Mar 2013.
Magnolia has generally received positive reviews.
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