Rating: 
Summary: Too flawed for greatness
Review: Of course Magnolia has a lot going for it - some excellent actors, well-written scenes, excellent camera work, and a clear personal involvment of the writer/director. However, despite all these positive elements, I still feel the film fails in its goal - being a great movie. There are several reasons for this, the most important being the length. For a three-hour movie, there isn't enough substance. The William Macy-story starts off very well, then just sits there for the rest of the film. The Tom Cruise segment has not a single surprising twist or turn, and the emotional conflict in which he is thrust seems to have no bearing on his fierce (and intriguing) misogyny. The quiz kid storyline makes its point from the start and doesn't add anything to this. And the presence of TWO people dying of cancer seems a bit much - while plausible, it looks as if Anderson ran out of ideas. (Having a 60-plus year old quizmaster die of AIDS might have been more original and thought-provoking).Though this is a multiple protagonist, multi-story film, there is no juggling with time frames or deliberate confusing of the audience. In fact, it is a sign of Anderson's talent as a narrator that he can keep all the storylines immediately recognizable and easy to follow. The surrealist elements do not work for me, however. The song-singing montage made me cringe and the frog finish strikes me as silly and superfluous. I know Anderson has a to his mind solid reason for this climax, but it didn't work for me on any level, rational nor intuitive. The music is quite obtrusive in this film - often too obtrusive for my taste. The Aimée Mann songs are typical singer-songwriter stuff - not my cup of tea, but for fans of the genre I'm sure they're a treat. I have a strong suspiscion that Paul Thomas Anderson was totally bowled over by Short Cuts and deliberately intended to make a similar film. In some ways he has succeeded, but on the whole Altman's work is still far superior and more mature. And the grand natural cataclysm finish didn't work there either.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing!
Review: I'm amazed for two reasons. Number one because Magnolia is the most innovative, fun, crazy, emotional, heroic movie I've ever seen. The characters become real almost instantly. There are so many strong fundamentally raw human themes running through the movie that are captured so poignantly that all I can do is let my jaw drop. The second reason I'm amazed is because of all the people who can't see this. First of all, the length is totally a non-issue. Not only was I upset when it ended, but I found myself watching this film three times over again within a 48 hour period. Only boring people get bored. This film was woven with such complicated genius that I believe I could watch it again and again, and not only never become bored, but continue to make exciting discoveries.
Rating:
Summary: Strange but interesting
Review: The first two and a half hours of this movie is your typical drama. Great actors and interesting camera work make it worth watching. The last half hour gets weird and a bit pointless in my opinion. Definitely one to watch, but I don't know if it's one to buy.
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie of 1999
Review: The strangest thing about this weird and wonderful movie is that, for all its 3 hours, it's a very intimate picture. Everything about it feels sweet and warm. The big full-blown magnolia embossed on the black mat DVD box, which serves both as icon and title, is somehow the perfect emblem for the movie inside: It's big and creamy and generous and lush and strange and (white-)skin-toned. Like the flower, the movie's characters are beautiful and bruised, larger than life (that can't be all Tom in those BVD's) and hearbreakingly fragile at the same time. They are fully drawn, flawed, and remarkably sensitive human beings whom I cared about deeply. The picture's major narrative themes -- lost innocence, robbed innocence, sin, forgiveness, redemption and/or the lack thereof -- are fleshed out in unpredicatable ways that, in the end, make perfect, quirky sense. Like everyone's daily life, the movie doesn't seem to have a beginning or an ending. The writing is exceptionally strong and the photography is gorgeous. The performances, especially from Cruise, Robards, Moore, and Reilly, Phillip Baker Hall (and oh! oh! oh! Jeremy Blackmun and William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman)- are virtuoso and transluscent. Every one of them. And the one's I missed too. The scene toward the end when everyone is singing along surrealistically with Aimee Mann's beautiful song is a TOTAL KNOCKOUT. ONE IMPORTANT CAVEAT: There is a biblical reference that keeps appearing throughout the film (Exodus 8:2). In the DVD version, as opposed to the theatrical version, this hardly noticable. It's very hard to spot on my 37" screen. Still, it's important to the film's wacky, deus ex machina, climax. (The frogs feel like mercy!) The DVD is a great set. The 2d disc has a long loopy diary of the making of the film that feels like it was made for P.T. Anderson's friends and family, but it ought to be of interest to anyone interested in the mind of the most interesting current auteur filmaker. The box is quite handsome and the graphics are inspired. This DVD is way worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Art imitates life? Or vise versa?
Review: It seems to me that people who liked this movie a lot, related well to it. That maybe the most important aspect of the film - and a very sad comment on our social fabric. I think that is the only reason I rated this movie. The film did not mesmerize me...I hung in there to find out just how bad could it get. Pretty bad. Similar to Boogie Nights, although one could justify it as a representation of the worse of those times. But why glorify the bad and the ugly? Magnolia might be a great documentary for a college class discussion or more, but as entertainment the film stretches the bounds of enjoyment of the black, the sadistic and the unfulfilled with nothing much else offered up. Albeit not in a pornographic or vulgar way - almost like trying to experience, via voyeurism, the feelings and minds of twisted and warped people. Yes, they exist, yes the director portrayed them well, but to what end? A cinematographic painting of ugly and jaded. More for the anthropologists to review in 3030 A.D. than "enjoy" as an evening's entertainment. Well, there you have it. My opinion and mine alone most likely.
Rating:
Summary: Pompous, Overblown, and Boring...
Review: Let me preface this review by stating that P.T. Anderson has real potential and Frank T.J. Mackey is one of the all time funniest characters ever to grace the screen. Magnolia is a flawed film, my biggest complaint is that it is too long. I wouldn't have minded but besides being too long, it was also dull and uninteresting fodder. Tom Cruise gives his career performance, Macy is amazing as always, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is solid as Phil. But still, why watch this film? It's just a three hour trip into the fickle lives of eight people who are utterly miserable in one way or another. There are some real moments of innovation in Magnolia like the frog scene and the singing of the cast members, but these moments are far outweighed by the remaining two and a half hours of nothing. You never really come to care about any of the characters and really are just waiting for a great pay off that never arrives. Magnolia is worth a watch not a buy.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: I was really surprised to see that I am one of the few people who did not like this movie. Although the actors did a very good job I think that "Magnolia" is way to long and hence gets pretty boring after a while. The story isn't very special either and the whole plot is way too dramatic at times even ridiculous. After watching Magnolia I felt that I just wasted 3 hours of my life...
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, but less would have been more
Review: Magnolia is one of those films where less would have been more. In attempting to do so much, the film actually suffered from excessive brilliance. Paul Thomas Anderson gives us a powerful auteur piece that succeeds on most levels, but comes up short of its true potential. The story follows one day in the lives of nine major characters and a host of minor ones whose lives are loosely connected to one man by various threads. Anderson does inspired work, giving us deep character development for each of the nine. Many themes run through the work, but the most pervasive is that of guilt and remorse. Moreover, almost every effort at atonement was rejected or thwarted in some way, evoking great pathos and a sense of despondent fatalism. This is clearly some of the best and most thought provoking dark writing ever done. From a directorial standpoint, the film was a magnificent display of directorial virtuosity. Anderson handled scenes, actors and visual details with the flair of a maestro. The swirl of scenes from character to character, the use of the camera and music, the juxtaposition of scenes, everything was superbly done. Yet, the whole was less than the sum of the parts due to Anderson's inability to let go of elements that encumbered the film (an irony since one of the main themes of the story was about being able to let go). Michaelangelo once commented that inside every block of marble, there is a masterpiece, and the sculptor needs only cut away the right pieces. Editing is one of most excruciating tasks of an auteur since each excision discards part of his soul. However, stoical editing is the area that differentiates great writer/directors from the good ones. This film had everything necessary to be one of the truly great films of our times, but it suffered from excess. There were too many characters. The story would have lost almost nothing by eliminating Donnie (William Macy), Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) and Claudia (Melora Walters). These characters really didn't add that much to the philosophical points being made in the film and made the film unwieldy. This would have trimmed forty-five minutes to an hour from the film and turned the focus more on the relationship between Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) and his son Frank (Tom Cruise) that was the very best element of the film. Also, Anderson went overboard on the profanity. I am no prude in this regard. I believe that profanity adds realism to a film because people are frequently profane in real life. I disdain the self-righteous prigs who are offended by it. However, overuse of any device to the extent that it starts to burden the story ultimately detracts from it. Anderson crossed that line. It seemed like he was trying to set a record for frequency and volume of vulgar expletives. If all the profanity were edited out, the film would have been 30 minutes shorter and Julianne Moore would have had about five lines. Finally, the plague of the frogs taken from Chapter 8 of Exodus was ill advised, as was the chorus of song by all the major characters at their point of greatest despondency. Anderson was trying to make important points with both of these devices, but in the process, they trivialized an exceptionally powerful drama to the point of eye rolling incredulity. Anderson was so uncompromising about every detail of his artistic vision that he missed the Big Picture (pun intended). The final version that was released would have been better released later as the director's cut. If Anderson had edited the theatrical release effectively, he could have had it both ways. He could have had a commercial success, critical acclaim, and he still could have given people an opportunity to see his entire vision. As to the acting, this is probably the best ensemble performance I have ever seen. Tom Cruise was nominated for a best supporting Oscar and much as I love Michael Caine and his performance in "The Cider House Rules", this was no contest. Cruise was electrifying. This was one of his best performances ever. I also thought Jason Robards' performance was worthy of supporting actor nomination. He was tremendous as the dying patriarch. The rest of the cast was phenomenal without exception. It is easy to understand why this film failed at the box office (at $23M, it grossed $14M less than its $37M budget). It was far too abstruse, intense, dark, philosophical and wry (not to mention lengthy) to have popular appeal. Of those who actually saw it, most either loved it or hated it. I must admit to feeling both emotions. I loved its genius but I hated that its final form didn't do that genius justice. Thus, I rated it an 8/10. It will undoubtedly become a cult classic rather than the true classic it could have been.
Rating:
Summary: Magnolia
Review: first of all. the movie is very odd, and thats why it gets five stars. At the begining it didnt make any sense, but then after u start gettin a hang of things u start to understand the meaning. a very dark yet magnificent movie. After watching the previews i thought, man dat movie looks dumb. but the i rented it and man i was left with my mouth open. all the symbolism makes this movie the best one yet. yes the movie is very odd. it involves about 5 different lives and stories that eventually come out to be two stories. Very powerfull movie with lots of meanings. I give two thumbs up to the director also for being able to bring this stories together and making them whole. Definitely a must see if u like movies that are odd yet make sense.
Rating:
Summary: the CIRCLE (of human abuse)
Review: When I first watched this movie, I thought the prologue was ingenius and totally got drawn in to the story. Then it started to go over my head and I wasn't too sure what the movie was about . My brother pointed out the obvious--it's a story about the cycle of abuse people put each other through. Then I was like: "OH, DUH". Ok. Weeks later, I found that this movie couldn't get outta my mind! And why? Because--I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's message of "the circle of human abuse" in my own life. We're not immune to it. It happens to everyone. We treat each other wrong and do it over and over. Now I realize how powerful and amazing this movie truly is. I have to see it again!
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