Geeze, if you don't like Magnolia you just can't appreciate the art of cinema? I hadn't heard. Reminds me of that English Patient episode of Seinfeld...

Pardon me if I inject some end-of-the-day-on-a-Monday-after-a-two-week-vacation-period levity into the proceedings... *sigh*... very well.

Magnolia is a failure because it falls short in its attempt to delineate the vagrancies of chance and coincidence and interweave them into a single compelling narrative. While narrative flow hardly seems like the strongest component of Anderson's film - the focus is clearly on tangential experiences mirrored throughout two or more characters (two dying fathers who ruined their children, a budding child genius contrasted against a former child genius who wasted his potential, etc.) - the overall capriciousness of the plot ("shit happens, suffering and redemption represent the universality of the human condition, what are you gonna do?") fails to engage the audience, in essence reducing them to little more than bemused voyeurs, spectators to an overlapping array of emotional trainwrecks. Anderson's constant aping - homage, we are told - of Altman's storytelling prowess reinforces the notion that we are watching little more than rehashed leftovers of a cinematic age gone by, only without the gaping pathos and liberation of self-consciousness that 70s cinema exuded by the truckload. The film is overlong without the substance to support it, and a handful of strong performances (Philip Seymour Hoffman, William Macy, Julianne Moore in particular) do little to bolster a script mired in tedium and overloaded with with a smug sense of "Look! More symbolic greatness!", continuously at the expense of genuine human interest.

A daring film? Certainly. A mundane film? Absolutely not. A failure? A BIG one.

All IMHO, of course. Feel free to disregard every review I've ever written, as my command of the English language just isn't passing muster. However, do me a favor and find me a good sushi joint in the Miami-Dade area. Thai Moon is simply TERRIBLE and you can't tell me otherwise.

Just plug in any movie title where you have Magnolia and make that your capsule review of any movie you see and don't like. Would be quite amusing.

I suppose this is the wrong time to mention that I felt Ishtar was a misunderstood and underappreciated piece of genius? Really? Oh. :(

You can't endear yourself to me with your love of Ishtar as I had given up on you the moment you revealed your appreciation for Altman.

What about unagi tamaki? I love a good eel hand-roll, but some places just overdo it with the sauce. Less is more, ya know?

I disliked Magnolia as well, for most of the reasons already stated. It's bloated, indlugent, and - worst of all- uninteresting. (And speaking of The English Patient I liked it as a war movie the first time I saw it, so I bought it on DVD. Now when I put it in my player, I find myself fast-forwarding to Kristin Scott Thomas's nude scenes.)

And Boogie Nights is one of my favorite movies.

And speaking of Michael Mann, the only movie of his I've ever liked was Manhunter. Heat was painful to watch. It was like sitting through dailies of a better movie. I remember watching The Keep on HBO when I was in high school and being bored shitless. (It's a cliche, but the book was much better.)

The thing about Kevin Smith is that his movies are entertaining for what they are. Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is that they aren't trying to be anything more than a long string of dick jokes. On that level, they're successful because they don't aspire to be anything more.

I liked Magnolia alot - perhaps it was because my father was dying of cancer at the time I saw it and I related to alot of it. Not just that though because I really enjoyed how everything tied together. I felt there was a great build-up in the stories that was all enhanced by the music and the atmosphere. I think the ending is perfect and I don't see anything indulgent about it at all. It's far from pretentious - it doesn't try to go over anyone's head - with the exception of the ambiguous ending. The acting and cinematography and sound design were all brilliant. I thought Boogie Nights was lame and I wouldn't try to defend PTA as some amazing director or anything.

Kevin Smith is not a filmmaker. He's an independent film-school type filmmaker. I saw a preview screening of Clerks and thought it was terrible, but kinda funny. You wanna talk indulgant - look no further than Kevin Smith's resume. Having seen Clerks many times (while working in a video store), I find it to be an amusing film on a level of familiarity. I can say I kinda like it. I liked Mallrats because it was just funny. It's a terrible movie, but it's funny. The rest of his films are complete crap. Chasing Amy is awful and only someone who has little or no understanding of how gay people operate could appreciate it. Dogma was pretty awful, but it had its moments. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was so unfunny that I was mad I wasted good weed on it. He has little understanding of people outside his circle and himself and yet he writes about all sorts of people... writing beyond his scope. He can create moments and can create funny situations (of the low-brow persuasion), but overall his films are all messes. He can say whatever he wants about other directors or actors - the same way I can talk about what a crappy director/writer/actor he is. He knows he's no artist.

Good lord. You've missed the point by a mile.

Who cares what you think of MAGNOLIA? This is about a DVDTalk critic writing...

It/you really sum up the writing going on right now in the review section. I find it sad. Oceans of people come to this site for info, and this/you is what's waiting for them. Yikes!

What I post off the cuff in a thread is not an official DVD Talk review. I'm off the clock, pilgrim. Just another forum poster.
Find one review -- ONE REVIEW -- of mine that is written in the same casual "Movie X blows and blows hard" style I used earlier. Just one. If you can do that Scott, I'll be impressed with your thesis. Because as of right now, you've got nothing.

And to intimate that my "Magnolia blows" argument is indicative of the writing style, cinematic knowledge, or analytical skill of, say, DVD Savant, Holly Ordway, Jason Bovberg, Aaron Beirle, Bill Gibron, or any other talented member of our Review staff... well if ignorance is bliss, welcome to freakin' Elysium brother.

I don't see anything wrong with Matt's comments. It's pretty silly to expect all comments about a movie, regardless of who it's by, to be written in a reviewers' candor. Casual chat in a forum is far different from a published review. If i watched a movie with a website film reviewer i wouldn't expect him to speak like he's writing a review. That would annoy the bejesus outta me.

It's been so long since i've seen Magnolia, but i do remember not liking the movie in the least bit even though i sat through the whole thing

Although I won't argue the fact that most people seriously dissed Mallrats -- maybe for great reasons of their own -- I consider it an unheralded, modern-day classic. If nothing, just for Jason Lee's performance.

Snootchie bootchies.

To me, it's one of those movies that if it didn't have John C. Reilly's character (and specifically played by him, which is probably why I like the character), I wouldn't find much to like about it.

The stories were blah, aside from the kid quiz show and John C. Reilly's character.

That's an uninformed and entirely inaccurate statement.

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