cinephile-27690 This is one of the absolute best movies I have ever seen.I walked into it knowing little about it-aside from Roger Ebert's review-which is on YouTube. (And by the way, he called it the year's 2nd best movie-behind Being John Malkovich-which I have not yet seen.) And the whole 188 minutes blew me away. The movie has 9 plots that seem to have nothing in common. What does a little boy pressured to win a game show have to do with a man who conducts seminars on seducing women? What does a woman with a wealthy husband dying of cancer have to do with an officer who falls in love with a drug addict(a fact unknown to him)? I didn't care when I watched it, though, I just stayed engrossed into the movie.Then a weird thing happens with frogs. (That's all I will say since I want this to be spoiler free.) What does THAT have to do anything? Eh,whatever.Then the movie ended. I was so enchanted by the movie that I was so bummed that it was over. Then I thought-what was that all about? Then I realized.All these characters had a struggle-to win a game, to dealing with a soon loss, to trying to date a person to numerous other situations. But the frog event made them worry no more, They had hope from this one event. All worries can end well if we have hope.That is the message I got out of it. Maybe you will look at it differently.And I think that was an intention in making the movie.Magnolia is a fantastic movie-and you should see and interpret it for yourself.

Pjtaylor-96-138044 For all its in-the-moment emotional impact and bursts of odd, intercut-driven tension, 'Magnolia (1999)' ultimately amounts to very little, even within its own individual stories. It avoids the usual narrative satisfactions under the guise of them being clichés - as opposed to tried-and-tested storytelling techniques - and tries its best to utilise coincidence in an apparently true-to-life way it's determined has not been done before - despite the fact that such coincidences are still clearly crafted to fit a preconceived plot and, therefore, should provide at least some narrative catharsis. As such, the flick almost feels like a waste of the enormous and, as Anderson himself puts it, unmerciful three-hours and eight minutes of your time it takes up. Yet, it does take up those minutes rather amicably, in the sense that the time sort of flies (to an extent) and you do become quite invested in some of the the intertwining tales you're being told, despite the fact that it's all so melodramatic and essentially one-note that it can be hard to take seriously even when it should be at its best - something which isn't helped by the in-your-face and often out-of-place music. The picture also constantly builds to a climax that never really comes, despite the big and all-encompassing event that tail-ends its third act. If it didn't seem like it was telling you how to feel all the time, it would have worked much better. 7/10

MartinHafer "Magnolia" is an incredibly unusual film...sort of an experimental project in it's style. Because of this and the occasionally extremely graphic language and depressing stories, it's a film that many would find hard to like...though I remember professional critics practically falling all over themselves praising it for its originality. So did I like it? Read on.As far as how the film is experimental, it features many different stories that are interwoven throughout the story and it is really not apparently what connects them all during much of "Magnolia". There are also many rapid edits and jumps that make it difficult to follow as well as the three hour plus running time.There is a prologue where several stories (including at least two urban legends) are all used to illustrate death and that perhaps in life there are no coincidences...and you can only assume the disparate stories that follow must be related to this...maybe. So what are the stories? Well, there are too many and too many parts to tell but they involve a dying man (Jason Robards) and his caregiver (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a woman who appears to be strung out (Julianne Moore), a cop who seems to go from one crisis call to another (John C. Reilly), a man who is dying and wants to reconnect with his angry daughter, an ex-quiz kid who now feels like a loser, a sociopathic motivational speaker (Tom Cruise) and many more. And do they all come together to make any sense? Well, they are mostly pretty depressing...at least I can say that without hurting the viewing experience.As I watched, I found "Magnolia" very hard to stop watching. Despite not necessarily enjoying much of the film, it sure kept my attention. Much of it was because the film features a lot of great actors and they had some amazing moments in the movie. Is it a film I loved? No. But I do respect it for trying to be different. And, on balance I am glad I saw it. But I agree with the director/writer when he later said the film might have been better had it been pared down a bit.

classicsoncall I'll tell you about strange things happening all the time, because I've experienced them. The very prior two movies I've seen and reviewed here on IMDb both featured a baby carriage scene in which an infant is carried away by a stroller down a long flight of stairs within sight of it's mother who is unable to help or give chase. One was the 1925 silent film "Battleship Potemkin", the other was 1987's "The Untouchables". I call these moments of cosmic serendipity, occurring completely at random, yet having a connection of sorts that were neither planned or expected. And now, here's a third film, "Magnolia", gloriously pointing out that these kinds of events happen all the time. One might ask 'What are the odds' in a seemingly moot way because who can explain it? As for the three vignettes that opened the story, at least two of them made the internet rounds some time ago - the scuba diver plucked out of the ocean to land in the middle of a forest fire, and the suicide attempt that was interrupted by negligent homicide. If memory serves, I think they were both outed as urban legends, but I can't be sure about that. Nor can one be sure about the unexplained coincidence that permeates this story with it's cast of unsympathetic characters. Though it's easier to explain in a film because that's the way the script was written, whereas real life is as random as it gets. As for all those frogs falling out of the sky, well, that's really happened a number of times throughout history with no apparent explanation. As to the sheer massive quantity and size of those amphibians, I think there was a little overkill employed to make a point. What the point was, I don't know.The person in the story I felt the most 'bad' about was the young quiz kid Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman). His life was careening down the same path as his predecessor Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), though in Stanley's case, I felt he had the potential to turn into a mass murderer. Recall when his father raged through the studio as Stanley wouldn't answer a question; the old man demanded to know what Stanley was doing 'to him'. Just a perfectly narcissistic parent attempting to cash in on his son's knowledge and initiative. The film offers a fine array of character performances with Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly leading the way. If there was a single twist in the story, my money rests on the fact that the game show was a Big Earl Partridge Production, while all the time thinking that Frank Mackey's (Cruise) claim his father was a former television executive a load of hogwash. Turns out he wasn't blowing smoke for a change.