Rating: 
Summary: Is this the shape of movies to come?
Review: "Boogie Nights" was over-rated, but not as much as this annoying, ridiculous, L-O-N-G mess of a film. Filled to over-flowing with whining and/or despicable characters wallowing in concurrent, bleak plotlines that don't in any way relate to each other, I still managed to sit for what seemed like an eternity waiting for that extraordinary climax that critics said would tie it all together. It never came. What "Magnolia" evaporates into is an ending so insanely bizarre, I couldn't believe I wasn't dreaming (or rather, having a nightmare). Guaranteed to make you want to kick yourself if you manage to make it through the supifying three hours it takes for this wilted "Magnolia" to unfold.
Rating:
Summary: Havent seen a worse film yet..
Review: Seeing Magnolia made me realize why i didnt like Boogie Nights either. PT Anderson has got to be the most self indulgent director the 90's has produced - at least if his movies had any meaning deeper than what you could see on any episdoe of MTV's Real World this wouldnt be such a fatal problem - charachters cursing and having hysterics to convey deep emotion doesnt cut it. The actors are all over the map in terms of their skills - Tom Cruise does well if the writing for his character wasnt so bad and the Singing Scene and Frog Scene are unintentionally hysterical but unless you fast forward thru the movie you have to sit through 3 hours of this mess to see them.
Rating:
Summary: disintergrates into pretention
Review: What begins as a compeling drama slowly turns into a music video/wanna-be art film. The symbolisim exists despite the fact that it means nothing. You see, the film tries to possess the awesome qualities which Kubrick, Lynch and Jarmusch are so amazing at producing, and fails miserably as it falls on it's face in a disgusting display of poor script writing and blatant soundtrack-tie-in commercialism. I was blown away by the arrogance, the sheer and unmitigated gaul of this movie. It throws some cosmic peculiarities out there that are completely void of purpose and depth, as if that will make up for the total disappearence of the plot, and then just goes on and on and on, without end it seems.MAGNOLIA is depressing because it begins so well (despite several uninteresting and unimportant charachters) and then it very slowly gets worse till your screaming out "This is terrible!" If the story had been more wraped around Tom Cruise and his family it would have been better, and over all the movie would have been better if it had had an ending and at least SOME closure. Do not waste your time on this... after all, it takes about ten days to watch it.
Rating: 
Summary: 1999's Best
Review: The true best picture of 1999 opens and closes with a narrator's meditation on coincidence, drawing from purported actual events (though at least one sounds more like an urban legend). The scene is meant to enhance the verisimilitude of the coincidences and chance encounters that both link and save the movie's characters. It's the characters themselves, however, that are the reasons for watching this movie. What happens to them is not incredible (at least until the end), and the events might not be all that entertaining, if they happened to other movie characters. But you get the sense while watching this movie that every single person in it is a real person, not all them necessarily persons that you would like to meet, but real persons just the same. And what makes this movie different from and, in fact, better than a film like "Nashville," which also concerns the interconnected lives of several individuals over 3 hours, is that you care for the characters. You care for them because the filmmaker cared for them. Watching "Nashville" I came to believe that Robert Altman disliked virtually every person in his movie. Every person in "Magnolia," however, is sympathetic in some way, at least by the time the movie ends. Two, in particular -- John C. Reilly's police officer and Melora Walters's junkie -- are the most endearing, and their story, at least for me, was the most important; the best part of the movie is that for these two, and for everyone watching, things ended exactly the way they ought to have ended. One final point: During my second viewing of the movie, I was more receptive to those portions (particularly the unbelievable meteorological event at the end) of the film that stray from the straight-ahead realism that impressed me most with the script the first time around. It was good to see a film that worked with realism but did not feel bound by it; those scenes that departed from basic realism (such as the one connecting everyone in song) expressed more than simple dialogue could and enhanced the film.
Rating: 
Summary: OK Film...NOT an Altman Masterpiece, However
Review: It ain't Short Cuts, but it tries real hard to be. Hey PTA, who you gonna rip-off for your next film? Kubrick? Hitchcock? You already tried (and failed) to mimic Robert Altman and Martin Scorcese. Try getting your own sense of style and DIRECTION.
Rating: 
Summary: DVD extras only okay
Review: There's a very long video diary, which shows us how exhausting it was to shoot, but in general isn't anything to write home about. Tom Cruise does not participate in this behind-the-scenes piece. There are some pieces of him in character doing the infomercial and part of his seminar. Big whoop... There are tons of trailers - who in their right mind would want to see so many?! And no commentary. Considering the big presentation of two discs, this is pretty mediocre. FIGHT CLUB is much, much more impressive in terms of extra disc extras....
Rating:
Summary: we may be through with the past.....
Review: frequently reffered to as malongia this film is masterpiece of films making. so its long? what, is a film a chore for you to sit through? you want sumimin short watch tv, you want a film in the 3 hour limit, this is for you, why should you complain, this is the most value for money you can get in a film. Its not a colleciton of stories with lots of characters, its ONE story, the film wouldn't be whole without anything in it, when you watch it, you may think its long yes, who doesn't, but you can't find anything you could take out, because its pure genious. After boogie nights critics were p-iling up to smash PTA but he socked em in the nose with magnolia, a pure treat, with some of the most wonderful acting in years. Soecial nods to tom cruise for pulling off the ultimate chauvenist frank tj mackey and john c reilly for his nervous yet focused cop who has finally foudn love again? aimee mans moving songs thorughout the film are soul marking, you won't forget them, or their impact you feel while watching, ideally htis film was meant for the big screen, but dvd is a close as you can get and thats as close as you need to see its beauty. best film of 99? i'd say so yes, if not , maybe fight club, but one thing is sure, that 'play on film' american beauty didn't deserve what it won at the oscars, but who wants an oscar these days? yes its long, yes its value for moeny, yes its one of the most engrossing films of the decade. you could say its one of the most realistic films for human life today, and after seeing the film, if it happend in amovie you wouldn't believe it, but would you believe it, when it rains it pours?
Rating:
Summary: One of the Most Overrated Movies in recent years...
Review: Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't seem capable of exhibiting any hint of subtle filmmaking. Whether he has someone paint their brains on a wall or have a middle-aged couple engaged in doggystyle coitus, he reeks of shock from top to bottom. Not only on the surface, but his writing riddled with profanity-per-second and over-the-top performances call more attention to the fact that the viewer is watching a "movie". Julianne Moore's performance in Magnolia almost made me forget how great she was in "End of the Affair". Gone were any signs of a subtle and meticulously constructed character. She has never sounded more out of her element, not even in "Assassins" did she seem to stretch so much. The opening camerawork would have made Mr. Handheld himself, Lars Von Trier, nauseaus. Covering sets like a hyperactive kid without ritalin does not say one iota more about the story...after 20 minutes, the camera finally settles down long enough to give you a chance to watch the actors' performances. One amazing thing about this film is how the score enters and simply does not know when to stop...if Paul Thomas Anderson had any clue how to map out the beats in a story to music, he would have been able to cut down the running time and tell the same story. Instead, 30 minute compositions, if you can call these hard dramatic eight measure loops that, seem like an eternity of meandering dialogue. Meandering, is indeed, the word that sticks to this film. In giving the film two stars instead of one, I found a couple storylines interesting. TJ Mackey (Cruise) shows the film's only semblance of a character arc. The interview and gradual breakdown Cruise shows is believable. And John C. Reilly's police character shows exactly how perceptually limited a cop is by his "just say no" mentality...assuming a black woman is guilty, and a white woman who snorts coke in the next room over can be dated. His single-minded character could have come straight out of a Coen Bros. or Lynch film. If I want to see long-winded self-important monologues and camerawork that aspires to Kubrick and Scorsese, I will watch the real archetypes at work in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinarly bad
Review: Im struggling for words after having wasted 3 hours watching this film. Words like self indulgent, sophomoric, embarassing all come to mind - the only unintentional highlight of this film is when everyone started singing along to the Aimee Mann song - was this supposed to be some kind of epiphany the characters were all experiencing collectively? Was this movie supposed to be a musical? PT Anderson is also the director of Boogie Nights and much of the cast is the same. If you found Boogie Nights tedious at least it was bound by some timeline and story -neither are present in Magnolia. Did i mention the charachters start breaking out and singing part of the soundtrack about 2 hours into this mess?
Rating:
Summary: Love it or hate it...
Review: ...and I hated it. At half the length, it would have been merely bad; at 3 hours, it's cinematic masturbation at its worst. Unlike movies such as *The Sixth Sense* that are genuinely clever, *Magnolia* attempts cleverness and in the process of congratulating itself falls flat on its face. Tom Cruise's hypnotizing performance as the self-help sex speaker is wonderful, but his piercing stare and proselytizing rants cannot redeem the drivel surrounding it. Likewise, John C. Reilly's down-to-earth cop is wasted amidst the other trash. The fatal flaw in *Magnolia* is that we are not presented with characters who are likeable enough to redeem their flaws. When the two cancer-ridden men are dying, the only catharsis comes from a feeling that they're getting what they really deserve. With Dirk Diggler from *Boogie Nights,* we remember his eager "I can do it again if you want" attitude even when he's at his worst, and we can like the character even though we dislike their actions. Not so in *Magnolia.* Then, the ending reduces the movie to the point of ridicule. Conveying no moral message, the Biblical allusion of the plagues is dismissed as a deus ex machina visual image floating anchorless in this exquisitely-acted yet poorly-conceived waste of time. *2 Days In The Valley* is much better done as a "shared experience" movie, and Kieslowski's *Three Colors* trilogy is a far more insightful look into the human spirit. Don't waste time on this.
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