Anderson made an aching, yearning three-hour epic about lost souls in LA’s San Fernando Valley, culminating in a nutty, biblical-level frog deluge.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 9, 2025

Magnolia is operatic in its ambition, a great, joyous leap into melodrama and coincidence, with ragged emotions, crimes and punishments, deathbed scenes, romantic dreams, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 15, 2023

While not as fully realized as Anderson's last movie, Boogie Nights, Magnolia is filmed with the same skillful abandon, and takes many more artistic risks... The result is a movie as fascinating for its flaws as for its considerable successes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 15, 2023

Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's frenzied follow-up to Boogie Nights, can be as intoxicating as the flower it's named for, and its characters, most of them as flawed and fascinating as the film itself, seem intoxicated by the overpowering scent.

| Jul 15, 2023

The film's structure is complicated, yet Anderson makes it look effortless. Completing the films emotional impact is the soundtrack of original songs by Aimee Mann.

| Jul 15, 2023

[A] sprawling, enthralling phantasmagoria.

| Jul 15, 2023

A personal drama and dark comedy of epic proportions, a visually exciting story of human emotion and cosmic circumstance. It is a compelling, innovative and sometimes brilliant work from director Paul Thomas Anderson. I just wish it were a better movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2023

Do we care? We don't, really, because while Anderson gives us a lot, he never gives us any opportunity to invest in his characters, or a sense of purpose to his pageant of unhappiness.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 14, 2023

It doesn't always work -- and with a three-hour running time, dead spots seem a little more frustrating than usual. But the failures can't be blamed on a lack of ambition.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 30, 2023

It's long, loud, crowded and overbearing. Its theme has already budded more gracefully in several screenplays and novellas by Paul Auster.

| Jun 30, 2023

A sensational piece of moviemaking -- a wild folly dripping with a sour nectar of cinematic bravado.

| Jun 30, 2023

With Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson establishes himself as one of the most exciting and distinctive directors around.

| Jun 30, 2023

In its radically flawed, aggravating way, Magnolia is something of a miracle itself

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 30, 2023

Anderson's ability to wring remarkable performances out of actors is proven not just by Cruise's... scary-hilarious portrayal of the self-deluded misogynist Mackey, but also by the incredible performances of Moore and Robards and young Jeremy Blackman.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 30, 2023

Magnolia is a plea for kindness -- especially between parents and children. It appeals to the emotional heart rather than the logical brain, but there's true greatness here -- it's a rare movie, about which one can feel true passion.

| Jun 30, 2023

Once the script framework is locked down -- nine characters passing through a single day and night in the San Fernando Valley -- Anderson can only trudge relentlessly through the bleak stations of American misery.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 30, 2023

Anderson writes like a playwright, building character so that he can give an actor a moment of blazing intensity, but he's also an instinctively daring filmmaker, as these experiments with time show.

| Jun 30, 2023

The most imperfect of the year's best movies, Magnolia's flaws are easily forgiven because they are the result of go-for-broke ambition.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 30, 2023

Anderson, 29, does so much in Magnolia, with such nerve, with wily humor and out-of-the-blue bravado, that the film's flaws and lapses don't really matter. It ain't perfect, but it's awe-inspiring.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 30, 2023

As bright as Anderson's future looks (three films, each a distinct, unqualified success), this might be the one for which he's remembered.

| Jun 30, 2023