Magnolia

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson followed his critical and commercial breakthrough Boogie Nights with this wildly ambitious story of lives intertwining on a single day in California's San Fernando Valley. Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a successful producer of television game shows, left his ...more

Magnolia is a dense, somewhat exhausting film. Clocking in at nearly 3 (!) hours, the Paul Thomas Andersonlensed drama is based in Los Angeles, and tells the tale of several archetypal Angelenos, who are all inevitably linked by fate in the end. It takes place over the course of a single day, where all the key characters are somehow, some way, separated by six degrees. Sure, the film is packed with too much emotion and too many characters, but their lives are like car crashes, littered with ...more

Even more audacious than his 1997 breakthrough Boogie Nights, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia explores nothing less than the uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of love. Reuniting most of the cast members from Boogie Nights, with the notable additions of Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, and Melinda Dillon, Anderson pays homage to Robert Altman's multicharacter mosaics, delving into the minutiae of fate, coincidence, and the human condition through the chance intersections of ten ...more