Magnolia was absolutely perfect. The sheer scope and ambition alone is amazing, but the fact that it all comes together, that PTA managed to pull it all off, is incredible. This huge mosaic of intertwined stories, of individually fantastic performances and moments that weave together to create this audacious tapestry of a movie. The flawless opening sets the stage and introduces the many seemingly disparate characters, all played by an unparalleled ensemble cast, but as the movie gets underway, connections and similarities emerge as the storylines begin to entangle. Listing all the things that make the film the masterpiece that it is would just mean listing everything that makes a movie. Magnolia is beautiful, it's perfect, it's the second best movie I've ever seen and I love everything about it.

Everyone has a tragic backstory and wants to love, be loved, forgive and/or be forgiven. I get it. But did it really need to take 3 hours to convey this? SO unnecessarily long. My favorite performances were probably Hoffman's and Reilly's, which grounded the film for me, but the overall narrative just lost my attention so many times. I wish the characters' lives had been more interconnected, or there were more "chance" encounters between them, or there had been less core characters to focus on and it had been a tighter story. The payoff at the end was not worth the time.

Was really looking forward to watching this. Ended up disappointed. Maybe I just don't get PTA.

Like each of writer / director Paul Thomas Anderson's other films, I found Magnolia excessively long, desperately wordy, hopelessly plodding and wholly hypnotic. Anderson has developed an innate talent for crafting versatile, flawed, joylessly realistic characters facing the end of their rope, and in that regard this might just be his finest work. While the author's deliberate pace is admittedly a major hurdle, it also allows him to explore his cast to an intimate degree that's untouched by his contemporaries. His characters seem so resistant to forward momentum, in fact, that the eventual arrival of major plot developments often caught me completely by surprise, like being stabbed in the heart by a sloth. Though Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore and William H. Macy deliver the most rewarding performances, this is really an ensemble piece that would fall flat without the presence of an equally powerful supporting cast. A terrific exercise in characterization, it can be tragically narcoleptic.