Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7553 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-02
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Colour, DTS Surround Sound
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 186 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A handful of people in California's San Fernando Valley are having one hell of a day. TV mogul Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is on his deathbed and his trophy wife (Julianne Moore) is stockpiling tranquilliser prescriptions all over town with alarming determination. Earl's nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is trying desperately to get in touch with Earl's only son, sex-guru Frank TJ 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 film-making, and an ensemble film to rank with the best of Robert Altman (Short Cuts, Nashville)--every little piece of the film means something, solidly placed 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 many characters Anderson can juggle, and can he keep all those balls in the 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 film-maker whose love of making movies is so purely joyful. This electric energy is reflected in the actors, from Cruise's revelatory performance to Reilly's quietly powerful turn as the moral centre of the story. While at three hours it's definitely not suited to everyone's taste, Magnolia is a compelling, heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful meditation on the accidents of chance that make up our lives. The soundtrack features eight wonderful songs by Aimee Mann, including "Save Me", around which Anderson built the script. --Mark Englehart

Independent On Sunday
Brilliant...superb...a great film.

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Trailer
Music Video
Tom Cruise Interview
Documentary Diary
English

Customer Reviews

Wise up
A love it or hate it film, to judge by the reviews on here. Some people even hated Aimee Mann's magnificent soundtrack. I loved it, and I loved the film. A great film, the greatest yet by P.T.Anderson, strange that the more recent "There Will Be Blood" seemed less accomplished for all its merits, and it was a less complicated film than this one. Roughly speaking "Magnolia" sketches the lives of a group of people whose lives are interconnected in various ways. They share various similar experiences past and present, and much of this involves issues of forgiveness, of their need to forgive or be forgiven. A lot of people on here say the film is trash. A lot say "I didn't get it". To the second group, I would say "Watch it again and imagine the film is called "Forgiveness" or (to quote the policeman late on) "What can we forgive?"

I think P.T.Anderson makes it difficult for audiences because of the prologue sequences. If you watch the film expecting the film's cohesions and coincidences to be just like the coincidences with the man killed by the chemist's etc, then the film will seem like an unfulfilled promise. The second time I watched the film I was not expecting a conjuror's flourish and I understood the film and appreciated it much more. This was perhaps a mistake on Anderson's part: the prologue is misleading, for my money.

It is a difficult film, and one that requires patience, but it is original, intelligent and powerful. The characters are (as many complain on here) often a little difficult to like, but that is the point. It's easy to love and to forgive Brad Pitt while he's telling you charming stories in "A River Runs Through It" and what not. But everyone needs love and forgiveness, and that doesn't mean that they will get it.

As the narrator says late on, "And the book says, 'We may be finished with the past, but the past isn't finished with us'". If you didn't like the film, or didn't get it, the film might not be finished with you, I really recommend giving it another chance.

Not really a movie
This isn't really a movie, more of a one-episode soap opera in which numerous characters lives tangentially interact through a crisis-ridden day. Despite it's inordinate length, many of the storylines and characters seem underdeveloped--it's both far too long and at the same time not nearly long enough.
There's an uncomfortable moment about two-and-a-quarter hours in, when you realise you have no idea when or whether this movie is ever going to end--and judging by the ending, the director had a similar moment himself.
So why is this a movie and not a TV series? It could have been everything Twin Peaks failed to be.

A Beautiful Microcosm of what life really is: Amazing.
It saddens me, and at the same time makes me chuckle slightly, reading the reviews of those that deem this film 'too long', 'boring' and so on. It's not confusing when you realise that the film is about different aspects of life, and the wonderfully uncategorisable people that reside in it.

It's a long movie, but its epic scale demand this length. 'The Characters aren't interesting' said one review...well let me say this: if you need a character to be simple, unsophisticated, happy-go-lucky and straight out of the Hollywood back-catalogue, then this might be the case; For those of us that love really intelligent and engaging films, Magnolia hits all the right notes.

The singing scene will split audiences down the middle, but it certainly stays in your memory long after the final credits. Infact, the whole film, from each wonderfully rendered character study to the brilliant details such as the biblical allusions of the plague of frogs, is mesmerising.

If the film starts rather confusingly, it's purely because the it does SO much in 3 hours. It's not slow moving in terms of emotional intensity or the sheer realism of the astonshing events that make up the lives of those we watch. And the result? - A film that, like American Beauty -far more cinema-friendly for many, I'm sure, (but possibly the inferior movie) explores the amazing details of life, love and death that pervade everyone's existence.

I loved it. And if you've got this far in the review, you will too. Buy it.

Regards,

Peter Wilson (London)Email your views to me!