CTroutt

I've heard a few reviews of this from sites & most all of them disagree with one another. So I wanna know how everybody else feels about it... thanks for the info!

Jackskeleton

great movie. i loved it. its more of a character study. the story is very intreging. and opposed to what many have called a long piece of (you place word here) it is really well done and the whole feel P.T.Anderson creates it with adds such a great feel to this movie. i wont give the movie away, but the ending is really a twist, and it all comes together well. theirs only one plot line that didn't make sense on the big screen, but it was because p.t. anderson decided to finally cut his movie by a little and that was the scene that would have explained it. so it will make perfect sense when it is released on dvd. I say rent it. see if you like it. but i loved it.

sherm42

Read this thread for a detailed discussion of this film. Good and bad.
http://talk.dvdtalk.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/014580.html

Peep

Or you could rent it and form your own opinion.

Count Zero

Can't say anything bout the film, but there's an early review of the DVD at dvdreview

Chili Palmer

Like Peep said give it a rent and decide for yourself. I'm in the "love it" category. Great film, acting, directing....a masterpiece if ya ask me!!

Jackskeleton

or you can use some coupons and GC and get it free. all up to you.

Modfather

It sounds to me a bit like a Robert Altman film (Short Cuts, Nashville). How would you compare it to Short Cuts? Similar?

adamcole

I posted this in the talk forum but no one was interested I guess. Any takers?
Spoiler stuff listed below I'm sure.
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I finished watching Magnolia for the first time last night and I enjoyed it. Since parts of the ending are left to our imagination I wanted to know what everyone else thought of the ending and what happened to everyone. I really need to watch the movie again but this is what I get out of it so far.

I think that the Game Show host died from a fire that started when the gun went off after he got hit by the frog. It was obvious that they wanted us to see the fire that started. The reason I think this happened is because it goes along with the boy trying to commit suicide at the beginning. It's ironic that he was trying to kill himself only to be hit by a frog to avoid shooting himself..only to start a fire that kills him laying knocked out on the floor. So he ended up not killing himself and dying of a freak fire. (Don't some religions believe that if you kill yourself you go to hell? So if he died by fire instead of suicide he got want he wanted without having to do it himself. Not that molesting your daughter.)

The police officer and the daughter of the game show end up together happy. I think they do at least.

Former game show wiz kid wanted braces to impress the guy at the bar but eventually changed his mind....only to fall off of the building and totally wreck his teeth to the point where he actually did need braces and corrective oral surgery. (Side note: For a second there I thought the cop and the former wiz kid were going to fall in love or something. Don't know why....I just got that impression for a second)

Tom Cruise dad died and his dog died as well. Did his dog die because the owner passed away or did the dog die from codeine overdose?

My friends were talking through the part where Tom Cruise was going to the hospital so I don't know exactly what hewas doing. He was going to see his dads new wife right?

What else happened? Let me in on the scoop because I think interpreting this movie was as fun as watching it.

Jackskeleton

i love the dvd feature of the T J MACKY bonus. man those are wild. hee hee.

TheDude

Recently re-watched PTA's Magnolia. Brilliant film.

Obviously there is a lot going on in the movie - which can be sometimes missed on the first viewing:

Liked the theme of a father trying to redeem himself because of something terrible that he did to an estranged child - this played out with two different dying fathers in the movie.

The "Search & Destroy" self-help "guru" played by Tom Cruise is a good representation of what I find most reprehensible in society - i.e., someone that falsely claims that they can "help" you to change yourself in certain ways in exchange for a lot of $ - in this case, it was a charlatan who claimed he could make guys more attractive to the opposite sex - which was obvious bull$#$#. These types of people are as bad as televangelists/preachers who bilk people out of their hard-earned money in exchange for "salvation". Scum-bags!

The "Raining frogs" in the film was extremely interesting - this seemed to have some sort of the "end of the world" meaning (though I'm not that religious), but am not sure abut that...

Hokeyboy

Nope. The movie is still terrible.

15 year bump? Is this a record?

EinCB

Excellent movie. The first film of Anderson's that I watched.

inri222

Except for Tom Cruise's performance I hated it. PTA is one of my favorite directors but IMO Magnolia is at the bottom tier of his filmography.

hanshotfirst1138

I'm on the fence about it. It's well-made, technically impressive, superbly acted. But it's sort of like being whacked in the with misery, and eventually the emotional fever pitch wore me down. Incredible performance from Cruise though.