One Paragraph Movie Review: Magnolia

Three hundred and forty-third film: Magnolia, a blatantly brilliant movie with an incredible cast that accidentally plummets into annoying moments and straight back out again. Starting with some charmingly-narrated stories about bizarre coincidences, this is about a bunch of people having a day in which their lives intersect to an Aimee Man soundtrack. The broad strokes of the story are about people at their worst — cheaters, losers, child molesters, drug addicts, and Tom Cruise in the role he was born to play: a narcissistic arsehole. But the gorgeousness comes from people we think might be bad at first — the drug addict, the incompetent, religious cop, the giggling investigative journalist — and watch them quietly triumph. Tom Cruise’s come-to-Jesus moment at his estranged father’s deathbed is marred by his over-the-top, tearful hamming, but it’s contrasted by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s deeply real-feeling professional grief as gentle nurse Phil. I get that the weird sort-of-music-video bit is a device but I’m still allowed to hate it, and I’m only just okay with the shower of frogs because it ties the whole peculiar phenomena them together, but it’s a good movie, huh. Four pairs of soiled quiz show pants out of five.