Magnolia
HOLY FUCKING HELL.
I heard stories of how great this movie was. It sounded like my kind of movie - deep and meaningful, artfully done. It was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson who directed Punch Drunk Love. Mr X loves that guy.
Mistake #1: Expectations were high.
I haven't seen it until now because anytime I see it for sale, it's always more than $20. I bargain shop for my movies, and $20 is way too much to spend on a movie I've never seen. So when I found it on sale in the used section at Gamestop, I danced a jig and snagged it.
Mistake #2: Putting the disc in the DVD player.
Magnolia opens with some interesting little snippets about amazing coincidences throughout history, talking about how these things can't really be just coincidences. For example, it talks about a triple hanging in a small town named Greenberry Hill. The three contestants, guilty of murder, had the last names Green, Berry and Hill. Wacky shit. On to the movie. The movie consists of the stories of nine people whose lives are all in some way intertwined. There were two characters in the film I didn't hate. For me, this movie was little more than a long exercise in misery. The characters have terrible things happening to them. They ruin the lives of others. The fact that they were all intertwined didn't really impress me. There were no neat little revelations where I looked at the screen, nodded and said "Oh! That's the guy from the game show! It all makes sense now!"
The acting was great (especially Tom Cruise) but good god, the fucker is 3 hours long. I kept wondering where it was all going. Around the 2 hour mark, I started wishing death upon the characters. I started thinking "Ok. I hate these fucking people. Do I really care what happens to them?" As it turns out, it wasn't going anywhere. Hooray.
SPOILER:
So anyways, something big did happen near the end of the movie. But it didn't mean anything. It fucking rained frogs. Fucking frogs. Yes, I realize this is a phenomenon that really happens. That doesn't make it a solid way to tie a story together. Spontaneous combustion happens too. Raining frogs is quite nuts, and in most movies I'd be ok with it. I wanted some sort of resolution here though.
END SPOILER
This movie is supposed to be about forgiveness, not there was much forgiveness in the movie. Maybe it's supposed to be about fucking ugly and terrible life can be. Maybe it's true, but I don't need to watch 3 hours of it to remind me. So, this is me working on forgiveness for pt Anderson for making this movie, and forgiveness for the people who said it was the second coming. It was unique, which is good. But it was also shit, which is bad.
Mistake #1: Expectations were high.
I haven't seen it until now because anytime I see it for sale, it's always more than $20. I bargain shop for my movies, and $20 is way too much to spend on a movie I've never seen. So when I found it on sale in the used section at Gamestop, I danced a jig and snagged it.
Mistake #2: Putting the disc in the DVD player.
Magnolia opens with some interesting little snippets about amazing coincidences throughout history, talking about how these things can't really be just coincidences. For example, it talks about a triple hanging in a small town named Greenberry Hill. The three contestants, guilty of murder, had the last names Green, Berry and Hill. Wacky shit. On to the movie. The movie consists of the stories of nine people whose lives are all in some way intertwined. There were two characters in the film I didn't hate. For me, this movie was little more than a long exercise in misery. The characters have terrible things happening to them. They ruin the lives of others. The fact that they were all intertwined didn't really impress me. There were no neat little revelations where I looked at the screen, nodded and said "Oh! That's the guy from the game show! It all makes sense now!"
The acting was great (especially Tom Cruise) but good god, the fucker is 3 hours long. I kept wondering where it was all going. Around the 2 hour mark, I started wishing death upon the characters. I started thinking "Ok. I hate these fucking people. Do I really care what happens to them?" As it turns out, it wasn't going anywhere. Hooray.
SPOILER:
So anyways, something big did happen near the end of the movie. But it didn't mean anything. It fucking rained frogs. Fucking frogs. Yes, I realize this is a phenomenon that really happens. That doesn't make it a solid way to tie a story together. Spontaneous combustion happens too. Raining frogs is quite nuts, and in most movies I'd be ok with it. I wanted some sort of resolution here though.
END SPOILER
This movie is supposed to be about forgiveness, not there was much forgiveness in the movie. Maybe it's supposed to be about fucking ugly and terrible life can be. Maybe it's true, but I don't need to watch 3 hours of it to remind me. So, this is me working on forgiveness for pt Anderson for making this movie, and forgiveness for the people who said it was the second coming. It was unique, which is good. But it was also shit, which is bad.
posted by Mr_Nuts at 10:46 PM
2 Comments:
Oh yeah. And blogger's a pile of dogshit for not letting me change the formatting on the last paragraph, even though it shows it as normal in the text. Way to go, douchebags.
nice... never seen it. guess i dont have to.
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