No wonder Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia is three hours long when you consider it follows ten individuals, such as Tom Cruise's arena-filling self-help guru and Julianne Moore's trophy wife of an older television producer, over a 24-hour period of their intersecting lives in LA's San Fernando Valley - a lot of day-to-day to cover, with the movie crescendoing to an almost unbearable level of shrillness at about the two-hour mark as all of the deeply human stories reach a fever pitch, but keeping you watching through the lengthy and ultimately unrewarding melodrama is the arresting opening sequence in which urban legends are used to lend evreything that follows only the illusion of philosophical depth and cohesion.
★★★☆☆
CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS
