Magnolia (1999)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
On one random day in the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, a young wife, a male caretaker, a famous lost son, a police officer in love, a boy genius, an ex-boy genius, a game show host and an estranged daughter will each become part of a dazzling multiplicity of plots, but one story.
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What critics compared Magnolia to
The homages are obvious, especially regarding What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Magnolia, and The Shining.
Cregger has cited Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia as an influence…
Inspired by John C. Reilly’s character in the similar ensemble epic Magnolia, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) hides his demons in the most literal way…
…influenced by Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999)…
Cregger has stated that the work of Paul Thomas Anderson, especially Magnolia, was a huge influence on the film, and this is clear both in the multi-stranded narrative and some of the characterisation (Ehrenreich’s cop is very similar to John C Reilly’s character in the earlier film) and some kinetic camerawork that recalls the big dramatic moments in Anderson’s film.
The film follows a non-linear structure and has already drawn comparisons to Pulp Fiction or Magnolia, mostly because of the ensemble cast, and dark comedy, but that's where the similarities end.
Clearly modeled after Short Cuts and Magnolia —the latter of which is nakedly aped during a third-act montage of sad characters set to a mournful ballad by Aimee Man-style singer-songwriter Bird York— Crash explores, via interlocking stories, the cultural, racial, and spiritual isolation of Los Angelinos.
Opens Friday in select cities Crash has echoes of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon, two other L.A.-centered films about intertwining lives told in a fractured narrative, though it is not as heart-wrenching and complex as the first and not as superficially glib as the latter.
He energetically weaves together interlocking characters and disparate plot elements, in the vein of "Pulp Fiction" and "Magnolia."
It reminded me just a tad of "Magnolia."
“Crash” never reaches the heights of “Short Cuts” or “Magnolia” – two multi-story films that clearly provided inspiration – but it’s a thoughtful road trip well worth taking.
The interlocking stories recall Short Cuts and Magnolia, but they mesh more smoothly into a better-crafted whole.
The jokes are significantly zingier than its predecessor, including a wonderful Magnolia reference, and the focus is back on Blanc, who manages to fuse comedy into even the more straightforward mystery portions of the script.
Johnson brings back mainstay cinematographer Steve Yedlin and editor Bob Ducsay, both of them working overtime to keep us engaged and on our toes with their visuals and pacing, capturing production designer Rick Heinrichs’ intricate set nuances and Jenny Eagan’s playful costumes (complete with a Magnolia look from 1999) with care, leaving us to warm ourselves in the sun-soaked surroundings and feel like the upper crust for a brief moment.
Memorable images abound in Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies — frogs dropping from the sky in Magnolia , Adam Sandler stockpiling pudding cups in Punch-Drunk Love , Bradley Cooper yelling in his latest, Licorice Pizza — but the scenes that stick with me most crackle with electric connection between two weirdos who’ve spotted, at last, their match.
Through it all, the platonic couple’s exploits allow Anderson and company to pinball around the same stomping grounds he featured in “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia,” this time with a rowdier, more overtly comedic sensibility, reminiscent of L.A.-adjacent cult classics “Valley Girl” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
His gentle attentiveness and soft self-assuredness recalls his late father’s performance as the tender-hearted hospice nurse in Magnolia who sits atop the jam-packed collection of Anderson’s greatest characters.
It's an explicit theme in Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, but barely submerged beneath the surface of There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread.
The director of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” riffs on the very early ’70s, back in the seriously unfashionable Encino in “The Valley,” where as “Boogie” reminded us, porn was king and those who never quite achieved Hollywood stardom could afford to live while they longed for the Big Brass Ring.
Anyone nostalgic for the “Magnolia” days will be delighted by the latticework of tracking shots and long dollies he busts out here, which evoke the verve of that earlier work but without the same biblical anxiety.
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En las antípodas de su cine coral (Magnolia, Boogie Nights), aquí el foco está en sólo dos personajes, con tomas son sencillas, poco uso de travellings, close-ups constantes y sin planos secuencia llamativos.
I imagine many Anderson acolytes — the ones who value the irony of Boogie Nights or the pomposity of Magnolia, for instance — will find this one of their least favorite PTA films.
Hard Eight and Magnolia, the hunger for reconciliation.
But keep in mind this is a flick by PTA, one of the most meticulous filmmakers of his time, if not all time – “Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights” and “The Master” are among his many gems – and it’s a gasp to behold in composition alone.
The film is framed as a love story, but it never swoons, and it’s enough to make you wonder: Why does Anderson, whose work back in the late ’90s (the transcendent “Boogie Nights,” the enraptured “Magnolia”) pulsated with off-kilter humanity, now make dramas that are essentially didactic studies of fantastically cold brutes?
Si Embriagado de amor (2002), a pesar de su ambición en todos los niveles, supuso una suerte de (auto)contestación por parte de Paul Thomas Anderson a Sidney (1996), Boogie Nights (1997) y a Magnolia (1999), como si realizase una película, en apariencia, más sencilla, pero desde luego, e incluso dentro de su gran complejidad y singularidad, menos ampulosa en un sentido narrativo.
“Inherent Vice,” while not as satisfying as Anderson’s masterpiece “Magnolia,” is a strange, twisting (and sometimes-twisted) tale that reminded me of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” because it shares Hunter Thompson’s “gonzo” vibe.
As with Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, the filmmaker has created another vivid Los Angeles, one that doesn't lean too hard on its pop-culture references to TV's Adam-12 or Neil Young's gentle Harvest album.
This is the first time revered and reclusive American author Thomas Pynchon has been adapted for the big screen; you could say he’s found his perfect match in the man behind Magnolia and There Will Be Blood .
As with previous Anderson films, which include “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia,” the movie contains colorful and questing characters looking for familial or spiritual connection in Los Angeles and thereabouts.
As a director, Anderson painted on the large canvas before he had the material to fill it: Boogie Nights and Magnolia now look drastically overambitious and it wasn’t until There Will Be Blood that he succeeded in matching form with content.
His heir apparent, Paul Thomas Anderson, however, has had success following a similar format of telling complex tales filled with lots of characters, such as occurred in "Magnolia," "Boogie Nights" and "The Master."
Speaking of not realizing how good we had it, it’s telling that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” deliberately evokes so many different movies from 1999 (Daniels also tap into the manic thrum of “Magnolia” in order to depict the entropy of Evelyn’s daily life, and exhume the swaggering nihilism of “Fight Club” for the villain’s self-destructive mayhem).
Even the most alive segment of the film, a montage of the intervening of fate, will have astute viewers harkening back to Paul Thomas Anderson's magnificent "this...cannot be that" prologue to Magnolia and giving no credit to Fincher for expanding upon that idea in any meaningful way or teasing us that his flair for the theatrics will make another appearance.
It also occasionally diverges into some great sequences depicting the cruelties of fate and irony, in a way that is not dissimilar to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia .
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The idea of romance through the years, or just the idea of focusing on multiple interrelated stories, is nothing new, having been seen in films ranging from the beloved Christmas classic Love, Actually or the more trite Valentine’s Day to those more thought-provoking in nature, such as Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Magnolia or Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Amores Perros .
On a scale of “Magnolia” to “Crash” to “Collateral Beauty,” this one is closer to the lattermost.
This is one of those Crash, Babel, or Magnolia-esque dramas where all of the seemingly disparate stories are connected in some type of way.
You’re reminded of the technique adopted by Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia , that start stop, marginally meandering approach, that in his hands felt assured, the mark of a director in command of the material, but here feels imposed, breaking two part stories into tens of intercut fragments.