Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There have been many terrific reviews written by other Amazon members that go into great detail about why this film was fabulous or why it worked or didn't. So I won't waste time boiling down all of the stories going on in this film again. "Magnolia" is a near masterpiece... The reasons it was a box office dud are too numerous to mention, but they run the gamut from its confusing title - to the decision to keep super star Tom Cruise's name in the background - to the bad word-of-mouth recorded by rating services which survey people looking for conventional narratives and resolutions as they walk out of theaters. I see 50 to 60 films a year (and not for a living), and I avoided "Magnolia" out of fear. Fear of wasting time, more important than wasting money. And another concern was the film's controversial resolution, the critical element that determines the success or failure of most movies with a mass audience. Now that I've seen "Magnolia" on video and have finally been able to philosophically, intellectually and logically string together its elements, there is no doubt that this is a wonderful accomplishment on film. "Magnolia" takes you on a journey whereby a master story teller challenges you to hang onto a breathtaking ride of images, content and music, and find the thread that strings everything, including the last 20 minutes...together in a way that makes sense. Yes, the point of the movie is that there are things which defy scientific logic. "Magnolia" tackles this premise and applies it to human behavior in a dazzling kaleidoscope of aural, verbal and visual montages - which make it IMPOSSIBLE - to stop this film to come back to later. You're pulled into a whirlpool, asking yourself, how is all of this going to end? This film is worth buying, especially with all of the extras on DVD. But it's also worth renting instead. Why? I'm not going to lie to you. A conventional audience won't like "Magnolia's" structure, its constant profanity and its twists and turns during the last 20 minutes. But the rest of it is compelling, exhilarating and uncomfortable at the same time. The acting, the story, the dialogue are consistently mesmerizing. I can't guarantee you will agree with the cosmic, unexplainable force that joins everything together at the end. And personally, I would have chosen something less comical and less biblical - (and saying "frogs falling from the sky" doesn't spoil the point as they were featured in this film's poster when it was released) - even though I think huge hailstones on a July afternoon in California would have more effectively delivered the same message to audiences. The controversial decision to visualize what for most of the movie is abstract - is the root of why I think the film is misunderstood by some - and hated by others. Yet I believe "Magnolia" is an intriguingly subversive film. Whether you like it or not, I guarantee you won't be bored, which is the curse of all lousy movies. Everything about "Magnolia" is in-your-face hypnotic. And if the resolution seems initially perplexing - if you think about it some more, everything might start to come together well after the film ends and you go back to resuming the monotonies of daily life. You COULD conclude that things which seem visibly ridiculous or irrational - are no more or less the same - as the "unscientific randomness" of human interactions and situations that we accept as plausible. In sum, see this, rent this, buy this - but don't dismiss or ignore "Magnolia" - it's 99 7/8ths the work of a young master.