|
Magnolia | 
| Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Actors: Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Tom Cruise, Philip Baker Hall
Studio: New Line Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $8.75
You Save: $18.23 (68%)
New (44) Used (13) from $8.74
Rating:  722 reviews
Sales Rank: 6799
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 188 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: TRNDN10960D
UPC: 794043109607
EAN: 0794043109607
ASIN: B000PAAJYW
Theatrical Release Date: January 7, 2000
Release Date: May 8, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Movie DVD
Amazon.com
A handful of people in the San Fernando Valley are having one hell of a day. TV mogul Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is on his deathbed; his trophy wife (Julianne Moore) is popping pills with alarming frequency. Earl's nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is trying desperately to get in touch with Earl's only son, sex guru Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), who's about to have his carefully constructed past blown by a TV reporter (April Grace). Whiz kid Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is being goaded by his selfish dad into breaking the record for the game show What Do Kids Know? Meanwhile, Stanley's predecessor, the grown-up quiz kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) has lost his job and is nursing a severe case of unrequited love. And the host of What Do Kids Know?, the affable Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), like Earl, is dying of cancer, and his attempt to reconcile with his cokehead daughter (Melora Walters) fails miserably. She, meanwhile, is running hot and cold with a cop (John C. Reilly) who would love to date her, if she can sit still for long enough. And over it all, a foreboding sky threatens to pour something more than just rain. This third feature from Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) is a maddening, magnificent piece of filmmaking, and it's an ensemble film to rank with the best of Robert Altman--every little piece of the film means something, and it's solidly there for a reason. Deftly juggling a breathtaking ensemble of actors, Anderson crafts a tale of neglectful parents, resentful children, and love-starved souls that's amazing in scope, both thematically and emotionally. Part of the charge of Magnolia is seeing exactly how may characters Anderson can juggle, and can he keep all those balls in air (indeed he can, even if it means throwing frogs into the mix). And it's been far too long since we've seen a filmmaker whose love of making movies is so purely joyful, and this electric energy is reflected in the actors, from Cruise's revelatory performance to Reilly's quietly powerful turn as the moral center of the story. While at three hours it's definitely not suited to everyone's taste, Magnolia is a compelling, heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful mediation on the accidents of chance that make up our lives. Featuring eight wonderful songs by Aimee Mann, including "Save Me." --Mark Englehart
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 717 more reviews...
 Yep, a Hard Secular Rain is Going to Fall April 16, 2009
Gregory Child (Salt Lake City)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Okay, I give the technical aspects of this film 5 stars. But 1 star for content. I like look-at-me camera work to an extent. The acting is all the way from pretty good to extraordinary. I can feel the actor's excitement at getting such actorly things to act upon (but, still, maybe a little too James Lipton "Actor's Studio"? Just maybe?). The energy to keep all the balls in the air on this film is very high. But I agree with the criticisms desiring substance over style. This is a perfect academic case of a director going straight up his anus all the way up the alimentary canal and out his mouth again and then proceeding to take another roundtripper through the digestive system. I get the redemptive elements, I get the human elements. I get the secular quasi-eschatological elements. I get it. I just don't think the substance is that good.
I think the director DOES prepare us for the frogs from the very beginning of the film. Yeah, it's a hard biblical rain that's 'a fallin' and it portends something apocalyptic. And, lo, here comes the angel of the lord in the raps of that little ghetto boy and the psalms/jeremiads being pronounced by the little boy genius on the quiz show with the angel/caduceus symbol in the background making him look so cherubic and so forth. I get that. But, from what I can understand from reading commentary from the director and others, is that he was bolting all this stuff on as he went along in the filmmaking process. Okay, that's fine. A lot of films are made in an ad hoc, improvisatory style. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here Mr. Anderson has made a huge stew of a movie that's never uninteresting to look at it's just. . .look, if he's making a humanistic sermon about whatever he's thinking about in life I would prefer an actual religious sermon from a preacher who is trained at that kind of rhetoric.
Three more things: (1) the profanity. I know it's moralistic and nancy to say so, but using it so much just IS lazy writing. If I want to hear somebody spouting the "F" word in anger I can do that anytime in my own room for free. I'm good at writing that kind of dialogue on my own. What I want in a movie is some semblance of eloquence. It's hard to really understand Julianne Moore's (or some other's) anger because it's all F___ this and F___ that. In the pharmacy she went all ape caca over those poor pharmacists when she could have just demurred by saying to them "it's for someone i know" and then quietly leaving. I understand her going off on the lawyer she's known for years and leaving a whole mess. For me, if I'm the actor I would want more than that. I just can't dig this Big Lebowski dialogue and come up with a real deep characterization.
(2) The self-help guru's seminars. Tom Cruise's acting is great but if you've ever had real exposure to self help seminars and the actual content of those seminars it's some of the most brilliant balloon juice you've ever heard: Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention, Susie Orman or Dave Ramsey's financial shows, etc., etc. The material that Tom Cruise is working with is so turgid and painfully unaware of what really motivates a crowd. It's like listening to those old "Married With Children" episodes where Al Bundy is having a meeting with the No Ma'am group of guys, only without the truly raucous humor Al and the rest displayed.
(3) That game show has been on for 30 years? Not on any major television network I would know of. It's way too nerdy and wonky. Alex Trebek and "Jeopardy" never gets THAT rarefied. Some variant of "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader" might last 30 years but not this. Only some rare opera buffs on the Metropolitan Opera are going to give you a riff from Carmen in the original French along with the melody. Only an eminent historian like Shelby Foote or David McCullough is going to be able to figure out who those quotes from coming from. But Luis Guzman? Are you kidding. Whatever Luis Guzman is like in real life, he mostly plays hoods and lowlifes and all of a sudden he's playing some genius polymath to go up against the young geniuses. Who's going to believe his posse. And why do the young geniuses only have the one kid to carry them? They've got two spoiled brats and this genius doormat. Come on! This resembles, maybe, an old college bowl quiz show that would show up local public television stations or public access. Maybe it is a quiz show from the magical realist land of Mr. Anderson but it sure ain't never been seen on NBC, ABC or CBS for no three decades.
I could go on. Summing it up. Exasperatingly watchable.
And keep saying to yourselves, people, "it's just a movie." It ain't kids starving in Africa.
 A Great Film About Faith April 14, 2009
CJA (Minneapolis, MN)
This is a story of faith, and of the the value of empathy and good works. The divine intervention and "deus ex machina" at the end of the film may be controversial, but it makes the point brilliantly. It's no more bizarre than anything recounted in the Bible and is meant to remind one of the various extraordinary plagues visited upon Egypt.
But the faith that matters -- the faith that stories of divine miracles are meant to inspire in us all -- is that of the nurse and cop who have the gift of empathy and the ability to see and to bring out the best in people.
The seemingly disconnected stories come together in a brilliant and compelling way. They are connected, after all, by the traumas visited upon us in our youth and about how those traumas continue to play out for the rest of our lives. We all share in this experience to some extent, and it's what unites us all.
Tom Cruise is surprisingly good in his role as the huckster son. Julianne Moore proves why she is one of our finest actresses. And then you have wonderful actors like Jason Robards and William Macy in supporting roles.
A couple of things don't work. The title makes no sense to me -- how does "Magnolia" capture the film's message of faith and hope? And the opening sequence of bizarre coincidences does not work for me. It misses the point that there are strange coincidences. What -- does the Supreme Being have some macabre sense of humor? The ultimate mystery is whether there is some force higher than us and the meaning of life appears to be having faith in something greater than us. The sketches at the beginning of the film don't capture this. Finally, the infamous sing-a-long scene by leading characters near the end of the film has been deservedly lampooned by critics -- though it is silly to suggest, as did the contemporaneous review in the New York Times, that one bad scene ruins the whole movie.
An absolutely wonderful film. Like "The Shawshank Redemption" it was a bomb in the theaters but will be seen in future years as one of the great films of the decade.
Excess February 20, 2009
Larissa Hoffman (Atlanta, GA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
While I can admire the technical prowess of Anderson in making this film, there were too many unbelievable story elements, too much cussing, and just too much depravity that it overwhelmed my delicate conscience.
Regarding the unbelievable elements, it wasn't the frogs or the characters breaking into song that put me off. Rather, it was the implausibility of Tom Cruise's character (Frank Mackie) and his misogynistic message, the quiz show's freakishly long run (30 years plus!?), the fact that everyone remembered a whiz kid (Donny), and other such mundane things. I know these weren't major plot points and were rather just simple vehicles to drive the story, their collective implausibility kept interrupting my suspension of disbelief and prevented me from fully buying into Anderson's world.
And the cussing! I know some of you have no problem with it, but it was excessive. Maybe I've just prematurely aged, but when i hear so much vulgarity I just lose interest in the characters and feel the writer is just being lazy.
Some will say, "Well, that's how people talk." Maybe, maybe not. I don't care to hang around people who curse every other word either. It just degrades the whole thing in my opinion.
Finally, while I have no doubt that father's betrayal of his family responsibilities is extremely damaging, I don't like to wallow in it's effects for so long. Some may find cathartic release, but after a time, it just wears me out. Plus, it's a theme that has been explored ad nauseum in movies and TV and I don't know if Magnolia had anything fresh to say about it.
In the end, the movie seemed like an indulgent exercise in artistic and psychological narcissism. I like some of Anderson's work, but he should apply his skills to more varied themes. Plus, I think he just needs a hug, maybe from the cop in Magnolia?
Magnolia Should have won an Oscar like Crash... January 27, 2009
David Margules (Englewood NJ)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Magnolia Should have won an Oscar like Crash...Crash got it ...But the real great movie was Magnolia and timing is everything...Reverse the order and Magnolia gets it...Provocative Performances from everybody in it...Rent,Buy it ...Its all about Change, Redemtion and your own personel Recovery...and yes it is the movie's 10th Anniversary of making it.
Simple, easy, nice. January 15, 2009
Craig Schmidt (Chicago, IL United States)
The DVD I ordered showed up in about a week and in perfect condition. Sweet.
|
|
|
Proud member of the Celebrity Pro Network. Make sure you check out these other great CelebrityPro network sites:
Lyrics Database
Celebrity Blog
Celebrity Thing
Celebrity PC
Latest Celebrity Photos
Portal
Travel Photos
Quotes
Flash Games
|
Is there a better
price available?
Find out:
|
|
|
|
