Hey, film Spotters, Adam and Josh. Here. You know, the film Spotting Archive has a lot, it has reviews, it's got top fives and more going back to two thousand and five. And if you want access to that full archive, just become a member of the Film Spotting Family. That's one of the benefits you get, and you can learn
more about that at film spottingfamily dot com. Now we've got a new Paul Thomas Anderson film this week, so we're going to dip into that archive for our review of Magnolia, which wasn't all that long ago, right, Adam.
No, No, twenty nineteen. It was part of our nine from ninety nine series. Yeah, we're getting ready for one battle after another. We're seeing it this weekend. We'll talk about it on next week's episode. Nine from ninety nine was fun. Of course, that was jam pack because nineteen ninety nine is one of our all time great movie years. We talked about the matrix being John Malkovich, the Blair Witch Project, the Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Eyes Wide shut.
Wait wait wait wait wait you skipped over muffle my Mouth Star Wars episode one. Uh huh, I think you also missed American beauty.
Oh kay, we talked about those two. You know, we had to reckon with the entire year. And yes, we also revisited Magnolia. People are gonna hear this just before they hear us talk about on Friday and we share the results to the current deeply flawed, deeply troubling, more like film spotting pole question. Actually, they won't hear the results because we're setting up the new question that people can vote in right now, the PTA Decade's Poll. Do you keep you can only keep one decade. Do you
keep the nineties that has boogie nights in Magnolia? Or do you keep the two thousands? Or do you keep the twenty tens. We're leaving out the twenty twenties for now. It's such a tough choice, Josh. And maybe people listening to us talk about Magnolia will make them think that the nineties is the decade they have to hold onto.
It's probably it's probably going to give the nineties a little bit of a bump in that poll for now. From November twenty nineteen. Here is that nine from ninety nine review of Magnolia.
There is the story of a boy.
Genius Thomas Kate Jong, the Peaceful, Cleanly Year, and the game show is Jimmy Gator Live from Burbank, California.
First question for twenty five.
This French playwriting actor joined the Beijar group of actors and the ex.
Boy genius Chrisky Donny Smith. I used to be smart. Now I'm just stupid. There is the story of the Dying Man. I'm Marl Partry.
I have a son you now you do find him?
I'm right TJ Mcki his lost son.
What did he say?
Because I Am not going to take care of him?
What's he want? The dying man's wife, I'm in departres. I took care of him through this Alan what now?
And then me and him?
Do you understand there's no one else? No one else the caretaker. I'm Phil Parma.
See this is the scene of the movie where you've helped me up.
And there's the story of a mother.
Unlike Paul Thomas Anderson, sadly, my creativity couldn't match my ambition. This week I started learning the guitar chords and rewriting the lyrics to Amy Mann's Wise Up before I realized I just wasn't going to be able to pull off singing your setup. Oh wow, that's no joke.
I started, Oh, don't tease me.
It could have been great, So I'm taking an easier route instead one already paved for me. You asked whether Pta was already a master filmmaker in ninety nine or if he was still warming up with Magnolia, and an av club piece from August described the film as quote exactly the kind of thing an artsy kid with all
the feelings would write. It's also the kind of thing that begs for the red pen end quote, and earlier this week in the Film Spotting newsletter, our producer Sam took a similar tack, comparing PTA's sprawling, intense day in the life of several somewhat randomly connected Southern Californians to
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. It's become conventional wisdom, according to Sam, to consider the five or so years prior to two thousand and sevens there will be blood as a quote sort of gestation period where Paul Thomas Anderson transformed from a wonder kind with more talent than wisdom, eager to show off how thoroughly he's absorbed the lessons of his idols to an artist of mature genius content to use his outsized talents to more enigmatic and subtle ends.
End quote. He then confesses I was guilty of this kind of thinking myself before revisiting Magnolia. It definitely struck me as the work of a younger artist, but in the same way that Sergeant Pepper's is the work of young artists. Both or Try Anything, Slash Everything works of boundless artistic imagination and formal mastery. But there are also works of great beauty, empathy, and understanding, you know, masterpieces. So a little bit of that classic Sam van Holgren
van Purbley in there for you. I'm going to propose that you, too, Josh, were guilty of such thinking coming into this revisit. The receipts include your three out of four star blurb, presumably written back in ninety nine.
Is that right?
Yeah? I think it's pulled from that.
Okay, in which you call mag another great imitation of a great movie from writer director Paul Thomas Anderson, and you cite Altman's Nashville and Shortcuts as Magnolia's prime influences. You're complimentary, to be sure, but the imitation implication suggests a still relatively unformed artist, a position supported by your
letterboxed ranking of PTA's films. I want to state clearly that, at least according to my research, you have not actually given a negative review to any Paul Thomas Anderson movie, but.
That would be correct.
You do have in last place his debut Hard eight or Sidney, third from the bottom, his second and breakout feature Boogie Knights, and in between those two is the film we're discussing, Magnolia. His three earliest works are the ones you fancy the least. So are you sticking to this narrative or are you ready to revise the list?
Is PTA's Tale of Wounded Children, despicable patriarchs and they're collaterally damaged caretakers, more profound develop piece of art than you initially gave it credit for, and did any of the performances surprise you? On this rewatch? In your blurb, you rightfully praise John c Riley's do gooder policeman Jim Kurring, Philip Seymour Hoffman's emotional hospice attendant Phil Parma, and Tom
Cruise's malevolently charismatic seduce and destroy instructor Frank TJ. Mackie, a role that earned him a Best Supporting Oscar nomination. But you were not a fan of Julianne Moore's manic adulterous wife Linda, or William H. Macy as whiz kid Donnie Smith, who has so much love to give? Won't you give some of your love to Macy and to the artistry of PTA, artistry that extends beyond breva steady cam shots to non diegetic ensemble singalongs, and of course
Frog's falling from the sky. Or will you always think of Magnolia most fondly as the stepping stone to PTA's true masterpiece, his next film, Punch Shrunk Love.
Hm.
Yes, Punchdrunk Love is just so wonderful. That's a whole other conversation. Can't wait till we do that Sacred cow review of that one. But I think this is going to be I don't know that we've had a full on Maya Colpa in the nine from ninety nine series, yet I know positions have shifted a little bit later and there. But who was this stingy bastard in nine?
Yes?
Who?
Now? Mind you? What I was hoping because you've stated so badly three out of four stars, you know, positive review? But why why did I get so focused on the things that held me back from it?
Just wrote it off as an ultimental talk.
About no no, Now, don't rephrase what you've already read. That's not exactly how I couched it. Noticed the word great there when I noticed it when I wrote a great imitation. So we're going to get to, you know, how I feel about some of those things I pointed out before. But what was with me that that's where I decided to go first? Yes, this thing has so wonders to it. The reservations I have pale in comparison to what this movie does well, And I would say
of the performances. We'll circle back to that. But my biggest sin was probably in a longer print review that I wrote that I dragged out of some boxes. I didn't care for Malaura Walters and this watch she just stunned me. Now, maybe those three characters have something in common we can get to. Maybe it's just a matter
that I had not yet learned to appreciate melodrama. I described this as we led into this review as a melodrama, and I don't think that was a genre that I quite understood twenty years ago as well or appreciate it as well as I do now. Maybe that had something to do with it, But yeah, I way underrated this, even if I think it's still it's more of a master work in progress. I'll stand by that. But I'm not going to be as harsh as it sounds like
that AV Club reappraisal was. It's still something absolutely wonderful as is, and I'm looking forward to spending some time on those positives.
Yeah, me as well. I'd love to hear more because I'm also a big fan of this film, and I'm a big fan of all of Paul Thomas Anderson's films. Our rankings are very different, though ultimately the same, because we're positive on all of them, and I think watching Magnolia again, I did realize that it would be very easy to be completely overwhelmed by it or exhilarated by the sheer audacity and the speed of it. It's three
hours and eight minutes long. I'd forgotten, honestly that it was that long yea too, and didn't quite believe the timer on the TV when it said it was that long, But especially that first ninety minutes before PTA deliberately slows the movie down. And I think there is a point where he deliberately slows it down. It's during Stanley's decision, the kid on TV who has told the world that he's not going to answer that question. He's standing his ground.
He's not going to be forced into this position anymore. And similarly, all of the other characters at that moment are having kind of breakthrough personal moments, and that's where he really does. PTA, for better or worse, elongate that that entire section, I think. But up until that, with the me music and the quick cuts that do connect
all these storylines and characters, it just propels forward. And as we talk about the artistry of it and how bold it is and whether or not it reflects an immature artist at this point, I mean, I did listen to the interview PTA gave to Mark Maron on WTF a few years back where he basically says in that interview, Yeah, it probably should have had twenty minutes cut from it. I was a little bit out of control. I was overly eager, and I wasn't going to be stopped. I
was going to have my way on that movie. Who am I to argue with pta, but that boldness going for a moment like we get with the frogs at the end, like the amy Man song wise Up that we've referenced a few times, even the moment like the one with Jim and Claudia. So this is John c Riley and Malaura Walters who have met when he has been called to her house by neighbors who are complaining
about the noise. So there's some disturbance there and they do end up making a connection and going out that evening, and they're two very broken people we see in that moment. But she has a line at one point where she says, now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again? That does feel a little bit forced, And now in retrospect, I know that that is a line from an amy Man song, and her songs are
really the foundation of this entire soundtrack. But it was a line he fell in love with, and he said, I'm going to find a reason to get this into the movie. I'm going to go ahead and force it into the film, And you know what, I'm on board with all of that, But it is the intimate moments that make the film so much more for me than
those pyrotechnics. And I will go back to that same scene with Jim and Claudia where it's pretty early in the conversation and she's saying to him, you're so good, you're so put together, you're a police officer, and pta doesn't linger on John c Riley's face, but he does keep the camera on him just long enough to see that flicker in his eyes where Riley is processing Jim,
the character he's playing, is processing so much. In that flicker, he's recognizing that they're exactly the same, that they are broken, that in addition to that, he's somehow fooled her, and that he's going to have to be completely honest with her, like he isn't really with anybody else, and it's gonna be uncomfortable, and he's gonna reveal just how truly pathetic
he is to her. And that kind of I guess nakedness of it, of that emotion, of that vulnerability, is really what I think makes Magnolien special.
Can I tell you something? Yeah, of course, I'm really nervous that you're gonna hate me soon. You're gonna find stuff out about me, and.
You're gonna hate me, no, Like, what what do you mean?
You have so much, so many good things, and you seem so together. You're a police officer, and you seem so straight and put together without any problems.
I lost my gun today? What I lost my gun today? When I left you? And I'm the laughing stock of a lot of people. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know.
And it's on my.
Mind and it makes me look like a fool. I feel like a fool.
That might be my favorite scene. Really love the film on this rewatch, and you're right, it's relatively unshowy in terms of the camera work compared to a lot of what we get here. But the timing of Riley's response when Officer Jim jumps in as she's talking about how she's messed up and he's so good and I lost my gun today, and it's like he just he blurts it out, because you're right, he's trying to keep up
with her with what she's throwing at him. And then what he follows that up with, I'm looked down on and I know that, and he's he's it's it's as if he may have always known that, but he's maybe never admitted it to himself until this moment, right, and her presence and her vulnerability is allowing him to do that. And then there is a bit of technical virtuosity when they kiss and we get the camera push in on right.
I will have other things to say about other us of camera pushes, the maybe four hundred and eighty three we get in the first twenty minutes, but this camera push is absolutely perfect. I also like about Officer Jim and Riley's performance out He's always talking and the choice Anderson makes. There are a couple times in the movie where he's still talking and we see that but we can't hear him.
Right.
One is when he's escorting Donnie back into the store to put back the money's from that he's rout from the and.
The sail actually in a more dramatic way.
That's what I was gonna say. With Donnie, we see his mouth moving, we see Officer Jim's mouth moving, and we just don't hear him. But then you're right, the final scene we do kind of hear him, and if you listen in over the Amy Man song, you can make out what he's saying, but it's not what the soundtrack prioritizes no, So it's just a good way of
keeping that reaction yes and keeping that character consistent. This is a guy who's just always talking, trying to say the right thing, being helpful more often than not, I think.
But certainly trying.
I do love that quality about him. So the overarching thing that I enjoyed about this movie seen in a second time, and it sounds ridiculous not to have watched this movie a second time because it is so overwhelming. How could I not have wanted to go back to it and try to figure out more and just pe smart again.
More than any other film. And I'll just say real quick, we've watched some mind benders in this nine series for sure, looking back on The Matrix and The Sixth Sense and other films and John Welco to make sense, and this is the only one where I really feel like I needed to watch it a second time before discussing it or what would ultimately be a third time.
For sure, And as wild as it all is, it all comes together in at least one way. I'm not saying there's an answer or a clue, but it is considering this essential question, it seems to me basically, do things happen for a reason? Is everything the phrase that's repeated often a matter of chance? Or are things crucially connected? And I think from the structure of this film, to the emotional beats that it hits, to the throw the frogs in here too, Magnolia argues that, yes, we are connected.
It may not be entirely sure how we're connected or why we're connected, but undoubtedly this is a movie that's pro connection, it's anti chaos, and I think this is why for all of its tragedy, and you know, there are some really awful things we learn that these some of these characters have suffered. Yes, I do find it strangely comforting, and I think this is maybe where the
regret theme is important. And regret is also something that's mentioned a number of times by multiple characters when we learn about the awful things they've done that they should be regretful about. But if regret, basically, if everything is just a coincidence, then what's the point of regret?
Right?
Why bother with regret if there's no sense of control here at all? And I think it's because the movie shows us that there is regret, because we are connected by the things that are beyond our control, yes, by things that are greater than us, yes, but also by our voices, especially those choices in our relationships. So again back to Officer Jim near the end, when he says, can we forgive? That's the part that's the tough part of the job. That's a tough part of walking down the street.
Right.
That's one way to corral the chaos of the universe, to forgive. And that's a through line that was just so consistent for me in watching this movie. That is probably one of the things I should have focused on and been less worried about whatever trick Anderson was pulling out of his bag to get there.
Yeah, well, there's certainly a lot of Catharsis here, and there are undoubtedly connections not just being made with the camera.
But if you really break it down all nine or ten or however many characters there are in this film, we see that there is something that is linking them beyond just the thematics, but there's that thematic element as well, And in every sort of subplot there is an element of a patriarch, as I mentioned, who has done terrible damage to a child, and I think one of the things that's kind of comforting about the ending of the film though, or a moment near the end of the film,
even though it's not necessarily the moment of emotional breakthrough we would want on the part of the father, But when Stanley is able to go into his father and confront him with his father's mistreatment of his abuse, maybe not on the scale of Malaura Walter's character or of Frank tom Cruise's character at the hands of Jason Robard's but the fact that he's able to go in you
talk about that connection. It's as if, even though he doesn't know those other people in this story that we're watching, we know the other people and we know what they've lived through, and we know what they regret and feel at this point in their lives, and somehow he has absorbed that and now he's able to go into his father and say things need to be different, and there's hope. There's hope in Stanley that somehow does I think, make you feel better about everything at the end of this film.
I like how that scene is played too, though, where his father doesn't he kind of ignores him and tells him to go to bed. You go back to bed twice, so it doesn't play it for this easy, now cathartic moment, but you're right, you do get the sense that a choice has been made. That's Stanley.
I think it's just in the act of confronting it. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more because when you talk about John c Riley's character and him telling us in that kind of voiceover about how hard it is just dealing with forgiveness and getting through the day, that's a meta element in a film
that has a lot of them. The fact that we hear him sometimes talking to us where it's almost as if there's a documentary crew in the car with him, but not really, but he's clearly just talking to himself. To himself.
Yeah, that's how I understand it, but it very.
Much feels like he's talking to us the audience. And there is that moment where Phil Parma, the Philip Seymour Hoffman character and Wow, talk about an amazing performance, not a surprise and believe somehow a surprise. It's just how good it was. When he's talking on the phone and he's saying, this is that scene in the movie. Things happen in the movie sometimes like this and I need you to now do it. I like that because it fits in with I think everything else is going on
in the film. The moment when we are exiting Malaura Walter's apartment and the camera quickly shows us the painting on the wall and the part that says, but it did happen that's written on the painting, a note just for us the viewer. The fact that most of the drama and suspense is built around a TV show, right, characters watching it at different points. It's the game show, and how that plays out the fact that Earl Partridge, the Jason Robard's character, is a TV producer who is
the producer of that game show. And it makes you think of the Partridge Family. Of course, this is the dysfunctional version of the Partridge family, and all these characters tie back to him. And did you catch in the credits to the Henry Gibson character, the kind of character who's in the bar putting on the airs of being this rich man of class who's talking to and kind
of harassing Donnie. The William H. Macy character. His name is Thurston Howell, which is the millionaire character from Gilligan's island, so Pta is playing with all of this stuff, including all of the different references to Exodus eight two and the different uses of the numbers eight and two that are in the film. The movie just dares you to repeatedly watch it, as we noted for these connections. But a couple more, Cruz unravels in front of a camera.
His entire facade breaks down when he's questioned for a TV news profile of some kind. And isn't the whole film in a way just a bye? How obviously cinematic it is. Isn't it all kind of like a TV drama with all these different characters that you meet, whether it's a sitcom or whatever, or a melodrama, all these different storylines. Think it's just kind of checking in on.
I compared it, and not derisively, to a soap opera in my original partner.
There is the element to it, but that all from me is building to a great moment in this idea of confrontation. And I want to talk about some of the surprises in the movie for you. If there were, as there have been throughout this series, certain moments where you just completely had forgotten about them in the twenty
years that have passed. I kind of forgot about the Melinda Dylan character who plays Philip Baker Hall Jimmy Gator, the TV host wife, and I forgot about that scene completely that they have where he's come home from the taping he has had some kind of attack, he's dying, and we've seen her up to this point be the doting wife. She has always been caring for him and worried about him, and you feel like she has possibly become content to accept a certain version of her life.
She is married to this guy who's successful, She's had a good life, and she loves this man, but she's been in denial about his past indiscretions, which he confesses to cheating on her multiple times, and she's probably been in denial about the sexual abuse of their daughter. And it's only when he unburdens himself of one of those anchors that's around his neck as he's dying, but not the other, that she forces him to really confront it.
It's as if she's saying, if you're going to try to make yourself feel better as you die by telling the truth and making me deal with this now, well then you're gonna have to actually be totally honest with yourself and with me, and I'm gonna have to hear all of it. And her line when she turns to him and says, I'm not through asking my questions. Yeah, that's one of the great lines and great line deliveries
in the entire movie. I think. I think it speaks to the inquisitive nature of this movie and that idea of confronting truth, confronting the reality within the randomness, and accepting certain narratives or abandoning certain accepted narratives. We see all these characters trying to carve out these new paths that seem to have been decided for them, So all those meta elements actually kind of swirl together, I think in a really neat way.
I'm so glad you brought up Melinda Dylan because I did remember that scene. I actually did not remember. I mean, it's really kind of the most horrible secret of the film, So it did stick with me, but I did not remember who played the wife, and I do not remember
how good she was in that scene. Because the element, you're right how you describe it, But it also is not like a got you like a courtroom sort of you're on the stand now you realize in her performance, the little hesitation she has, she could make that choice to still deny it tell what you're talking about. But the courage it took for her to say he may die tonight, but I am going to follow this through no matter how painful this is going to get, and
the courage that she brings to that. I think she probably has maybe three scenes in the film or four, but that scene between them is just so absolutely wrenching, and she's fantastic in it.
Do you feel better now that you've said this?
I don't know.
Well, I'm not.
Mad, Oh I am, but I'm not.
You know, I love you so much, Ruse.
I'm not through asking my questions.
The other performances that I did want to talk about, you've touched on a lot of them. I think we covered what's so great about Riley Philip Seymour Hoffman. You absolutely see why Paul Thomas Anderson was like, I'm eventually giving this guy his own movie or as close as you could. Yeah, with the Master from what he does here, I feel like that line, this is that scene.
I know this sounds silly, and I know that I might sound ridiculous like this is the scene of the movie where the guy's trying to get a hold of the long Lost Sun, you know, but this is that scene.
This is that scene.
And I think they have those scenes in movies because they're true, you know, because they really happen, and you gotta believe me, this is really happening.
It's again, it's it's pta like dancing, like just like it's a little too little, too much. But if anybody, if you tell it Philip Seymour Hoffman to say it, Okay, it's gonna work, and he pulls it off for sure.
I just want to say he makes it something to human would say, yeah, he does, while also being idiosyncratic with every moment, but not distractingly. So anything that he says, it's supposed to be remotely comic, is a little funnier than that moment probably should be or could have been with another actor. And you talk about wrenching every emotional beat is a little more heartbreaking than that moment could
otherwise be. I think, because really the secret of it, I think to the acting with Hoffmann is that he's always serving the other character in the scene, whether it's Cruise, whether it's Robarts, whether it's Julian Moore and her history. Really see it right, He's just a character and an actor ultimately who's bursting with empathy and as I said, not a surprise because we all know he's one of the best actors ever, and yet moment to moment he constantly surprised me.
You know what's interesting about him in the film is that a lot of these are uncomfortable characters, and even if you're interested in their stories and where they're going to go, when we return to them, you're a little bit on edge. Whenever it comes back to Phil, you feel like you're in good hands. This is a good place to be. Part of that is the occupation this nurse,
but it's also the empathy that you talked about. So Cruz, I mean, you know, not surprising that it was probably the stand up performance for me the first time I saw it. Watching it again, I like to think, and having seen twenty years of time Cruise performances since then, I like to think that on set, the early version of Frank Mackie we get is that Cruz does like a less misogynistic version of that for himself to get
himself pumped up for every scene. He does. It's just fantastic how he gets himself ramped up and he's giving two performances here. Right, there's that creening first half where we see him and then also the bravado breaking down during the interview that he mentioned. But really the breakdown comes. He doesn't break down there, He kind of like shuts down there, right, that's stare and he just says, I'm silently judging you.
Yes, wow, yeah.
But the real breakdown comes when he does, of course finally meet his father who's on his deathbed, and again Cruse using his Cruise powers not to cry, right and saying that right, I'm not gonna let you make me cry, even though as an actor that's what the character requires. But you just knowing what sort of a performer Cruise is, how he's one hundred and ten percent all the time. Yes, you can see when he's gripping his hand and trying to prevent that.
Yeah, how much he's giving that, I think not a surprise. You're right, And yet I did feel like he was even better than I remembered it. And I think it's because in ninety nine there was that element of oh, we're watching Tom Cruise do something he's never done before. We're watching Tom Cruise play a vile character, and there was a performative aspect to it. As you said, there is certainly a performative aspect to the character he's playing.
He is playing a role absolutely as Frank TJ. Mackie, and he is a performer on stage for his sort of sycophantic fans who are buying his product. But it is a very textured performance and it's a very powerful performance. And you touched on those silent moments. It isn't just the Blake moments of misogyny and some of the exercises he does and is underwear that all of that that came back right, It really is again it speaks to the whole film. It's those quieter moments. And I do
think that breakdown with Robards and you nailed it. That demand of himself to not cry, but his body taking over in those moments and kind of almost forcing it out of him is really strong.
I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna cry for you, you sucker. I know you could hear me. I hate your guts. You can just dye you. And I hope it hurts. I hope it.
Hurts now I'll throw at you. As I mentioned from your ninety nine take, not a fan of William H. Macy and Julianne Moore. I do think that Donnie's storyline overall is the weakest link in the film. I do feel like those bar scenes. Anytime we go back to that bar, I felt as if I was ready. I was ready to go, sooner than Paul Thomas Anderson was ready to go, ready to get back to some other characters.
Felt like it maybe meandered a little bit and definitely had some redundancy in terms of him articulating his pain and his loneliness. That isn't to say though I don't think William H. Macy's really good in the film. I think it's exactly the type of performance we've seen from William H. Macy in a lot of great films.
Yeah, I would say, you know, I excited those two performances, but I think it was more to suggest that the material was not serving them as well as it served the other characters. I do agree, and maybe for me partly it's also the obviously it's a film of coincidences, but having two quiz kids, a grown quiz kid and the Young quiz Kid was almost, you know, like too much of a doubling down on that sort of theme.
And the one thing watching again that I did notice about both More and William H. Macy scenes and Laura Walter scenes has a bit of this, but as I said, I think she navigates them a little bit better. There's a lot of shouting back and forth with other people, whether it's the multiple lawyers that Julianne Moore's character goes
to me or Donnie with his bosses. It speaks also to this element of this was a movie that you get the sense, and it sounds like he said he wasn't going to cut a second out of and those maybe have been the places, those heightened emotion shouting matches that those two characters get engaged in became a little bit redundant for me. Yeah, you know, I would not go so far to say is they are bad performances. I don't think the material is up to the level there in those scenes that it is elsewhere.
Well, I'll admit I'm not sure ultimately where I fall on Julianne Moore watching this film, and I would have said coming into it, oh, of course, I mean I think she was nominated for an Oscar as well, along with Cruz, and she clearly has a great body of work behind her. I've enjoyed a lot of her performances, but there is a theatricality that goes beyond just a bigness and goes beyond just the yelling. There is something very pronounced and very forced about her performance that I
don't feel in any other performance in the film. And you could point to the fact that she's a character who is becoming progressively unhinged and is also fueled by drugs. I think that's very clear. So the performance being a little bit scattered makes sense. And yet, like I said, it did overall stand out for me as one, I was never quite on the same plane with her when she was on screen. I mentioned surprises in terms of things you just didn't remember at all about the film.
Did you have anything that stood out to you a certain scene or an idea that wasn't something you recalled from your previous feeling?
Well, do you want to talk about the frogs? I mean, we can't. That's the biggest surprise in the film. Obviously I knew it was coming, but just you know, I also had ahead of me, and are the frogs going to make any sense this time or any more sense? And obviously, as you suggested, they are foreshadowed. We see that Exodus eight two, you know about the plague of the frogs in Egypt. We see a sign that just says Exodus eight to an audience member holding at the
game show, and someone comes and takes it away. It's also I think foreshadowed in the Boys rap to Officer Jim on the street. I think the final line there is when the sunshine don't work, the good Lord bring the rain in, which could obviously suggest the storm we see. But also maybe there are the storm of frogs.
There are chapter breaks too, essentially which remember that are all weather report. It suggests maybe not that frogs are going to fall from the sky, but the weather is getting worse. Yes, And whether the movie's preoccupied with it, and.
Whether something still No matter whatever technological developments have come about, we.
Cannot control write it can't control.
It's the ultimate chaos. So I do think with the frogs, it's telling that the first person to experience it is Jim, because he's maybe the only one in the film who who seems to believe in a providential God. Some of those moments where he's talking to him are actually one or two are actually prayers.
Yep.
So he seems to have this sense behind him here. Yeah, yeah, kindly, well, he seems to have a sense that there. He believes there's someone guiding events right, putting things in his path, giving him then the choice of what to do with what he comes across. So something more than just coincidence. Yeah, and I always.
Think God too to help him find his gun.
Yes, exactly, that's another one of the prayers. Also, it's interesting that the frogs precipitate Earl's death. That's that's kind of what they lead up to. We've been anticipating it the whole film really, but this is when it arrives, and death another maybe can be seen definitive act of God. So I think the bottom line is, you know, for me, the frogs are they're sort of like man's songs that
are sprinkled throughout. It's just another way to connect these characters in an exact moment with a singular experience and absolutely singular experience.
And a singular, unexplainable experience which the whole movie is predicated on those types of experiences and this idea that something unbelievable, something miraculous can happen. And not only can it happen, it does happen. It happens to people every day. And I think one of the reasons I was so set up for it, beyond the fact that I knew it was coming, is the prologue, which was my big surprise. I had completely.
Forgotten me too, Yeah, had completely.
Forgotten about that opening sequence in the narration by Ricky Jay, who does appear in the film as kind of the executive producer or one of the producers of the game show, and it absolutely sets the table for everything that unfolds. It says, what you're about to watch defies rationality. It defies reason, but sometimes so does life. So buckle up. And so when you get frogs falling from the sky at the end of the movie, it's almost like we knew it was going to happen.
Yeah, I think that's fair. But here we're getting to some of my critiques that I am going to say still stand, and it has to do with maybe the first twenty minutes of this film. Sam, I believe you the phrase formal mastery and describing his revisit, and I just don't think I think there are moments of that, but I don't think it's consistent throughout the film, and I don't think it has that formal mastery in these
first twenty minutes. I admire it's brio and maybe in nineteen ninety nine like that's I just never recovered from this sort of onslaught we get at the beginning.
Like it could be overwhelming.
Yes, I can meet us, That's how I would describe the experience. First, we do get the narrated prologue that you're talking about, so it whips us through these historical incidents of coincidence. The first one shot like a silent movie, right with the spect ratio, black and white everything, and it's about a man being murdered in the neighborhood of Greenberry Hill by three men named Greenberry, Hill and Hill.
Then we move to this story of a woman who fires a gun at her husband, only to miss shoot her son, who had just jumped to his death from the roof of their building that was passing by there and had loaded the gun. Yes, okay, so this is like coming that fast and furious past I forgot Pat Naswa too. Yeah, the scuba dive scuba I official surprise, totally forgot about Patton Oswalt go ahead, what was his well.
Experienced He likes to scuba dive, and he ends up getting picked up in one of those planes I don't know the proper name, that picks water up to dump it on forest fires, and he got picked up with the water and dropped up the tree and died. And then, of course the other coincidence is that he actually had had an encounter, a kind of violent altercation or a skirmish with the guy who ultimately was flying the plane at his blackjack table where he's a dealer a week or two prior, a few days prior.
And then that pilot of Pilono, learning what happened, kills kills himself. Okay, so which brings me to admire the brio again. But there's a sense of self satisfaction to these, all of these sequences here that I still find a little off putting. And there's a flippancy and a glibnus to it as well, especially when you think about the actual violence being recounted in these stories. So there's that
element that's our first maybe eight minutes or whatever. Then we get this mannic sequence introducing all of these characters, all of these people we've been talking about, and the filmmaking itself is just too much here. I still stick to that it's like he's coming into his powers but is not fully in control of them. Think about the way I would describe it, It's like Peter Parker going out to websling for the first time.
Right.
We've seen those scenes in how many Spider Man movies, and you're odd at what he's doing and experiencing. But every once in a while he hits a wall and he's going to have to get up and try again. And this is where the camera pushes really did start to bother me. I think half of the shots as we meet each of these characters again, maybe it's to develop consistency to connect them, but it pushes right in
at a dramatic moment on the central figure. I also think there's an over reliance on the first Amy Man song we hear one to create a sense of montage that otherwise isn't really there in the actual filmmaking. If you look on it, we get those repeat pushings, but the song is doing most of the work to create
a montage out of this. So again like you're wowed at what's being attempted here and and and maybe that's enough for most people for you, but I think this movie for me, Magnolia gets really good once it settles down and stops trying to prove itself. And I think that happens eventually, once we've met those other characters, we'll get like that showy single take through the TV production studio that maybe we need to see every floor a
room in the entire building, impressively done, impressively scored. But when Magnolia settles down, that's when it's closer to a master work.
Hey, come here, Ah, I'm gonna try talk, and I'm trying to say something something, Do you know? Do you know? No, Bully, No, I don't. Oh excuse my love my life, love of it.
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The burn.
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