Magnolia

1999

Action / Drama

140
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 82% · 216 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 89% · 100K ratings
IMDb Rating 8.0/10 10 327425 327.4K

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Plot summary

An epic mosaic of many interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.


Uploaded by: OTTO
December 09, 2021 at 09:25 PM

Top cast

Tom Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey
Julianne Moore as Linda Partridge
William H. Macy as Quiz Kid Donnie Smith
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
797.65 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
3 hr 8 min
Seeds 67
3.48 GB
1920*800
English 5.1
R
23.976 fps
3 hr 8 min
Seeds 85

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by bkrauser-81-311064 8 / 10

Not Sure What to Think But I Know How I Feel

Paul Thomas Anderson; when filmophiles say the name, it is uttered with such reverence that the man may very well be canonized the contemporary patron saint of film. Offering a comparatively limited array of millennium masterpieces, PTA as he is lovingly sometimes referred to, perfectly balances his films' complex intellectual tapestry with a strong emotional core. The man is an admitted film-freak, listing influences as varied as Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Max Ophuls. Pare enough layers and you can see how PTA apes certain images from these infamous auteurs. Yet his themes are wholly their own, mixing loneliness, isolation, family dysfunction and in the case of Magnolia, cosmic coincidence as a means to his cinematic end.

Magnolia follows an ensemble of interrelated and fatally flawed protagonists over a three day period. All are somehow connected to the L.A. based Partridge Productions owned by the elderly Earl Partridge (Robards). Earl is dying of cancer and asks his nurse (Hoffman) to contact his long-ignored son Frank (Cruise) who now makes his living as a professional pick-up artist. Meanwhile Partridge Production staple, the quiz show What Do Kids Know? is airing live with host Jimmy Gator (Baker Hall) who is also dying of cancer. Gator struggles to repair his relationship with his daughter Claudia (Walters) who has developed a cocaine habit and lives in relative anonymity. Meanwhile one of the show's contestants, Stanley (Blackman) is waffling under the pressure of his domineering father. The film is also book-ended by narration provided by stage magician Ricky Jay who offers further tales of the Ripley's Believe it or Not variety.

I am truly at a loss of what to think about Magnolia. It's a messy, dense and demanding movie that grabs your attention through the power of sheer pathos. The common thread of resentment towards fatherly bonds certainly begs the question and offers theories about what Magnolia is about. Yet any interpretation on PTA's singular vision falls short; torn asunder by complex editing, parabolic storytelling and characters histrionics. The film is big, the film is ambitious, the film (at over three hours) can feel punishing. And in the end resolutions are left frustratingly obscured amid the chaos. Many audience members will likely feel jipped though I remind you, life itself often makes no sense; why should we presume to find intellectual cogency in our art.

As we bounce energetically from one story to another, the audience is never feels lost in time, rather the film condenses and expands time in playful and interesting ways. For example: the quiz show for all its cerebral quality, is used as a stapling plot-point for most of the film's threads. Presumably the show takes place over half an hour, yet within that time, more than an hour of the film is un-spooled.

Magnolia is unequivocally a minor masterpiece of world building. The film reaches its emotional apex twice; within the first 20 minutes and within the last 20. Characters fiercely clash with one another like starved rats in a cage, helped in some cases by the presence of drugs, alcohol and in Tom Cruise's case alpha-male braggadocio. After a time, the characters settle into a routine awaiting the next existential crisis that gives them grief and the audience indigestion. Tension builds and builds as heroes and villains face off. And just when you think you can't take anymore, the film rewards with a plot-point so out of left field that you'd swear the Old Testament God was smiling on Magnolia's L.A. denizens.

I don't know what to think about Magnolia, but I know what I feel and I'm certain the feelings evoked by this film are purposeful and prove PTA to be a masterful storyteller. The film makes its audience run the gambit of emotional resonance, elevating its broad-stroke temperament with near operatic persistence. The camera, with its near omnipotence forces us to ask questions about the story and more importantly about ourselves. How do we control or alter our reality? When should we forgive? What problems left dormant in the past effect our lives in the present? We may not be provided with clear-cut answers but at least after watching Magnolia you may be pushed to wise up.

Reviewed by bkoganbing 6 / 10

A Biblical Plague

I was enjoying Magnolia right up to the part where a biblical type of plague came down upon all the characters in the film and I was then wondering what it was all about.

Magnolia is an episodic, along the lines of director/writer Paul T. Anderson's previous success, Boogie Nights. A whole bunch of people, tied to each other by a successful long running quiz show have a lot of life altering events happen to them within 24 hours. The problem was that in Boogie Nights you followed a community of people from the pornography industry over a period of years. In Magnolia this all happens over 24 hours, more like Crash, although I think Crash was better handled.

Some parts are better than the whole. Several characters for me really stood out.

Tom Cruise took a daring career move in playing a motivational speaker for hedonism and male supremacy. How he arrived at this particular doctrine he preaches and makes money off is his story. His hedonism is covering up a very deep hurt from childhood.

I liked William H. Macy as a has been celebrity made by that quiz show as a child. He's come to the end of his rope being able to cash in on that celebrity. Now he's a forty something gay man, mooning over a young and humpy bartender at his local watering hole and thinking he could nail the guy with a little cosmetic improvement on his part.

Magnolia was the last theatrical film of Jason Robards, Jr. who plays the producer of the quiz show, Kids Know Best. The idea was to match whiz kid type geniuses against grownups in some sort of academic bowl situation. It actually sounded like a good idea for a real quiz show, I'm surprised no one thought of it in real life. Robards is dying of cancer and he's made a mess of his life as well as his sons's. Their reunion is painful to say the least.

But of all the performances in the film by the grownups, I liked young Jeremy Blackman as one of the current kids on the show. He's being pushed by a stage father, Stanley Spector, who's living vicariously through his kid.

All these good performances and others just somehow don't come together in the way Boogie Nights or Crash does. And the ending with the plague of frogs descending on Los Angeles was really too much and unnecessary.

Reviewed by MartinHafer 7 / 10

A really creative film that is certainly not for everyone...

"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.

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