I was enjoying Magnolia right up to the part where a biblical type of plague came down upon all the characters in the film and I was then wondering what it was all about.

Magnolia is an episodic, along the lines of director/writer Paul T. Anderson's previous success, Boogie Nights. A whole bunch of people, tied to each other by a successful long running quiz show have a lot of life altering events happen to them within 24 hours. The problem was that in Boogie Nights you followed a community of people from the pornography industry over a period of years. In Magnolia this all happens over 24 hours, more like Crash, although I think Crash was better handled.

Some parts are better than the whole. Several characters for me really stood out.

Tom Cruise took a daring career move in playing a motivational speaker for hedonism and male supremacy. How he arrived at this particular doctrine he preaches and makes money off is his story. His hedonism is covering up a very deep hurt from childhood.

I liked William H. Macy as a has been celebrity made by that quiz show as a child. He's come to the end of his rope being able to cash in on that celebrity. Now he's a forty something gay man, mooning over a young and humpy bartender at his local watering hole and thinking he could nail the guy with a little cosmetic improvement on his part.

Magnolia was the last theatrical film of Jason Robards, Jr. who plays the producer of the quiz show, Kids Know Best. The idea was to match whiz kid type geniuses against grownups in some sort of academic bowl situation. It actually sounded like a good idea for a real quiz show, I'm surprised no one thought of it in real life. Robards is dying of cancer and he's made a mess of his life as well as his sons's. Their reunion is painful to say the least.

But of all the performances in the film by the grownups, I liked young Jeremy Blackman as one of the current kids on the show. He's being pushed by a stage father, Stanley Spector, who's living vicariously through his kid.

All these good performances and others just somehow don't come together in the way Boogie Nights or Crash does. And the ending with the plague of frogs descending on Los Angeles was really too much and unnecessary.

'Magnolia' is perhaps the most polarising of Paul Thomas Anderson's work. A lot of people have found it thought-provoking, emotionally impacting and dazzling in many ways, while many others have found it dull, self-indulgent, bloated and overlong.

This reviewer falls into the former camp. 'Magnolia' perhaps feels indulgently overlong in places, and the final group musical number does feel contrived and out of sorts with the rest of the film. On the whole though 'Magnolia' is a dark, daring and dazzling film, and another winner in a filmography where this reviewer has yet to watch a dud.

All of Anderson's films are visually stunning, and 'Magnolia' has some of the most haunting and scintillating arresting images of any of his films, especially at the end. The long takes and tracking shots are distinctively Anderson and look wonderful, the whole film is beautifully shot, very atmospherically lit and the production design is suitably audacious. The soundtrack is rich in emotion and sticks in the head, and all the song choices are well chosen. Some found it intrusive, not to me.

Regarding the script, it contains some of the most thought-provoking, layered and poignant writing of all Anderson's films. The story has a long length to work with, and doesn't disappoint with the pacing which is a mix of suitably manic and suitably languid when either extreme is needed, unpredictable, beautifully developed, hugely entertaining, dark and often very emotional scenarios and richly layered characters, remarkable for so much going on. Anderson's direction is also exemplary.

Another controversial asset of 'Magnolia' is the ending, something that many will find powerful (again fall into this camp) and others will be perplexed. Whatever extreme you find yourselves, it certainly is not an ending that one forgets easily. Anderson's mastery of direction of actors and their interactions shows through loud and clear, with the whole cast giving superb performances in one-of-a-kind roles, for some among their best.

Tom Cruise in particular has an absolute ball, and he is particularly well supported by a gleefully entertaining and charming John C. Reilly, a touchingly restrained William H. Macy, an as always exemplary Philip Seymour Hoffmann and a heartfelt Julianne Moore. Jason Robards and Melora Walters also do brilliantly.

In conclusion, dark, daring and dazzling. The most polarising of Anderson's films but incredibly well executed, a flawed masterpiece somewhat. 9/10 Bethany Cox

"Magnolia" is an incredibly unusual film...sort of an experimental project in it's style. Because of this and the occasionally extremely graphic language and depressing stories, it's a film that many would find hard to like...though I remember professional critics practically falling all over themselves praising it for its originality. So did I like it? Read on.

As far as how the film is experimental, it features many different stories that are interwoven throughout the story and it is really not apparently what connects them all during much of "Magnolia". There are also many rapid edits and jumps that make it difficult to follow as well as the three hour plus running time.

There is a prologue where several stories (including at least two urban legends) are all used to illustrate death and that perhaps in life there are no coincidences...and you can only assume the disparate stories that follow must be related to this...maybe. So what are the stories? Well, there are too many and too many parts to tell but they involve a dying man (Jason Robards) and his caregiver (Philip Seymour Hoffman),a woman who appears to be strung out (Julianne Moore),a cop who seems to go from one crisis call to another (John C. Reilly),a man who is dying and wants to reconnect with his angry daughter, an ex-quiz kid who now feels like a loser, a sociopathic motivational speaker (Tom Cruise) and many more. And do they all come together to make any sense? Well, they are mostly pretty depressing...at least I can say that without hurting the viewing experience.

As I watched, I found "Magnolia" very hard to stop watching. Despite not necessarily enjoying much of the film, it sure kept my attention. Much of it was because the film features a lot of great actors and they had some amazing moments in the movie. Is it a film I loved? No. But I do respect it for trying to be different. And, on balance I am glad I saw it. But I agree with the director/writer when he later said the film might have been better had it been pared down a bit.