Review of Magnolia (1999) by Movie1997 — 19 Aug 2015

Paul Thomas Anderson knows how to write interesting characters. "Magnolia" centers around the different stories of multiple people. We have two characters dying of cancer. One is a cop that falls in love with a drug addict.

Tom Cruise is a sex mentor. The list goes on. As a result I love this movie. Grant it, it's not a perfect movie and has its issues. But we'll get to that later. To be fair, there is a lot to love about this movie.

Anderson wrote and directed the living crap out of this movie. He has such a beautiful vision not just from a cinematic scope, but from a storytelling point of view. And he has also written tons of interesting characters.

John C Reily as the cop. Jason Robards and Phillip Baker Hall as the two men dying of cancer. Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Robards nurse. TOM CRUISE AS A SEX MENTOR! There are tons of more characters than that, but can't talk about them all day.

However the performances from the cast is stellar. They hold their own emotional weight to their specific stories and carry the film. Sure some were better than others, but all their stories were nevertheless engaging.

And Tom Cruise just kills it in this movie. In a movie filled with literally top notch performances, he stands out as my favorite character. It was just something totally different from what we've seen him do before.

I loved how the stories are interconnected but never to the point that they have to try to have everyone come across everyone in some forced way or fashion. It's not like those ensemble movies in which everyone meets up at the end.

For a 3 hour long movie, it keeps me engaged the whole way through. If anything only the last 5 maybe 10 minutes dragged. That's it! Plus it also has a rewatchability factor to it. Again, it goes back to having all the interesting characters keep you engaged the entire movie.

Ive seen this movie twice and still plan on watching it a third time in the near future. As far as issues, I will say that Julianne Moore's character was the one that I could never care about. It's the fault of Anderson's writing rather Moore's performance is completely over the top.

Luckily she doesn't have as big of a story as essentially every other character. But I could never get into to her character like I did with everyone else. And there is a big event near the end of the movie, while a great scene, it just felt completely over the top and absurd.

Maybe because that the whole movie felt so grounded in reality up until that point. I guess it's just something I have to look further into. But overall, it's such an entertaining movie with stunning performances by almost everyone, fantastic writing and a great vision (for the most part) by Anderson.