Magnolia

Been a long time since I last watched this but even though this was 3 hours long, never felt the length and I was pretty much captivated throughout (although I did pause a few times to get refill on my drink or grab a snack). The performances all around were great, most notably Tom Cruise, Melora Walters, John C. Reilly and the young Jeremy Blackman (Stanley). It does get heavy-handed and while I "get" the raining frogs scene, that took me out a bit (albeit it was towards the end). **4.0/5**

As a side, the other two kids (Julia and Richard) were hacks, counting on Stanley to carry them. Som...

I remember seeing this in the theater with one of my friends, during our first year in college. We had all found our way back to town and... given we lived in the sticks... we ended up going to the movies out of habit and for lack of anything else to do.

And I'll be honest, at the time, I walked out of the theater kind of blown away. I hadn't really seen a movie like that before.

I mean, the closest thing that came to it was American Beauty, and we had only seen that a few months prior... and that had more of a plot.

At the time, I'll admit, I thought it was pretty good.... and then I...

Julianne Moore at her's Peak & and also all of em.
**What the Frogs!**...

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

I'm not sure if this entire film was built around Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," or if Magnolia is really a love letter to Aimee Mann herself. What's clear is that Paul Thomas Anderson wrote his sprawling, three-hour epic with her music as the foundation. Nine original songs from Mann comprise the soundtrack, her dark, sardonic style meshing perfectly with Anderson's vision of damaged people struggling through one terrible day in the San Fernando Valley. In the soundtrack liner notes, Anderson writes that all the stories branched off from one character inspired by ...

This isn't so much a piece of cinema as a cinematographic exercise is crochet-work! There are nine folks central to it's plots - for there are at least three - yet as we progress we realise that there is a degree of integration between the characters that becomes less tangential as the stories unravel. "Jimmy" (Philip Baker Hall) has hosted a quiz series for thirty-odd years that showcases the precocious wisdom of the children of America. It's current champion is the astonishingly bright "Stanley" (Jeremy Blackman) but as their team achievements edge ever close to record-breaking territory, he...