AN ELEGANT EXPOSÉ OF HUMAN FRAILTY
A scene from 'Magnolia'
Courtesy Photo
"MAGNOLIA"
***1/2 stars 180 minutes | Rated: R
Opened:
Saturday, December 25, 1999 (NY/LA)
Friday, January 7, 2000 (limited)

Written & directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Jeremy Blackman, Tom Cruise, Melinda Dillon, April Grace, Melora Walters, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, William H Macy, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, John C Reilly & Jason Robards



This movie received an honorable mention in the Best of 1999 list.


 COUCH CRITIQUE
   SMALL SCREEN SHRINKAGE: 20%
   LETTERBOX: COULDN'T HURT

Emotional intensity should jump off almost any size screen, but this is a movie that requires your undivided attention.

   VIDEO RELEASE: 7/25/2000
 DVD SPOTLIGHT
2 disc set, but why isn't clear. There's nothing on the first disc but the movie. No commentary or anything. Disc 2 includes a really good 90 minute, chronological, informal making-of docu that follows Anderson through the release of the film and its Golden Bear win at Berlin Film Festival in Feburary 2000. Hilarious pay off at the end in which, after the film's release, Anderson pretends to be the collective audience and girlfriend Fiona Apple pretends to be "the movie" as he chews her out ("You're no 'Boogie Nights'!") for being too long and working out the director's neroses at the expense of everyone else's $8.50. Great stuff.

OTHER NOTABLE BONUS MATERIAL
Frank T.J. Mackey seminar footage and infomercial. Trailers & TV spots. "Save Me" video. Easter egg: Go to the color bars and wait 15 seconds for 10m of funny outtakes.
SPECS

  BUY IT HERE
2.40:1 ratio; 5.1 or 2.0 Dolby
DUBS: none
SUBS: English
DIGITAL TRANSFER
Excellent

DVD RATING: ***



 REVIEW CROSS-REFERENCE

















Cruise a stand-out in engrossing mosaic of intricate everyday characters bulldozed by emotion

By Rob Blackwelder

An intricate mosaic of emotional stories intertwined by coincidence, "Magnolia" is an elegant exposé of human frailty written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who demonstrated his gift for burrowing under his characters' skins in 1997's melancholy porn industry soap opera "Boogie Nights."

He's honed that skill in the last two years, and his new multi-narrative, which features many of the same actors, is stunning and magnetic in its ability to tie you impulsively to even the most wretched of characters.

"Magnolia" takes place over the course of a single, unusually stormy (on a mythological scale) day in the San Fernando Valley and meditates on the complexities of family, and on the facades people put up to mask their insecurities, their grudges, greed and regret, their love, their selfishness and other symptoms of the human condition.

Jason Robards plays a dying rich man, painfully estranged from his rageful, resentful son, Tom Cruise. Cruise is astoundingly powerful as a vulgar, misogynistic, wildly egotistical motivational speaker who teaches emasculated men how to dominate and manipulate women.

Julianne Moore plays Robards' young wife, whose regrets about marrying for money have eaten away at her soul, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is his compassionate nurse who tries to reach Cruise to mend fences before it's too late.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Blackman is the brainy champ of a kiddie quiz show (featuring amusingly impossible questions) whose imposing stage father (Michael Bowen) has pressured him to the edge of manic neurosis. (A parallel track follows William H. Macy -- totally in his element -- as a mousy, miserable home furnishings salesman who clings desperately to his faded identity as the program's first star player some 35 years before.)

The quiz show host (Philip Baker Hall) is another ailing father trying to patch things up with his twittering, seething, cocaine-addicted daughter (Melora Walters), who in turn sees her chance for salvation in a kindly, insecure cop (John C. Reilly) who asks her out after taking a call about her loud stereo.

Each of these stories has such depth and scope they could easily be movies unto themselves -- especially with these across-the-board incredible performances that give the sense of these characters' entire lives. Anderson's dedication and skill at weaving them together with correlation and coincidence cannot be underestimated. He has this innate ability to turn everyday feelings of doubt, anxiety and ego into completely engrossing cinematic moments.

"Magnolia" has a beautiful, richly dark visual atmosphere that enfolds its characters and, as with "Boogie Nights," Anderson's technique has a definite Scorsese bent to it. But you can't really fault the guy for taking his cues from one of the best, and the picture is otherwise entirely his own, as he demonstrates his rapt dedication to his stories -- and to his characters bulldozed by their emotions -- with rich details that bring an extra dimension of truthfulness to his film.

Cruise's performance is the most obvious example, as actor and director conspire successfully to garner our empathy for this loathsome, venomous egoist, even as we continue, by design, to despise him.

"Magnolia" is a potent work of concentrated humanity and a definite do-not-miss.






BUY IT CHEAP!
In Association with Amazon.com
On DVD

On VHS

Score

Sound-
track

or Search for
 





 



SEARCH SPLICEDwire
 
powered by FreeFind
SPLICEDwire home
Online Film Critics Society
©SPLICEDwire
All Rights Reserved
Return to top
Current Reviews
SPLICEDwire Home