So much of the brilliantly acted Magnolia is terrific that one wants to love the whole thing—all three hours of it. But writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, the prodigiously talented 29-year-old who also created Boogie Nights (1997), doesn't know when to stop. He keeps piling on characters (Magnolia has nine major ones) and scenes and rambling monologues until he simply wears you out. In this sprawling cinematic canvas, that surrender comes about two hours into the story. You can't help but wonder: Couldn't Anderson have dropped a character? Isn't this scene running too long? Don't we all already get the point?
The point, by the way, is that our pasts cannot be ignored, denied or outrun. Most of Magnolia's characters try to do just that in this ensemble drama set in California's San Fernando Valley (Magnolia is the name of a major street there), before confronting their individual failings, passions and—in two cases—mortality. As a character says, "We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us."
The movie's major characters include a fumbling cop (Reilly), a good man keenly aware of his limitations who begins a tentative relationship with a troubled druggie (Walters). There's the young wife (Moore) of a dying old man (Robards) who realizes too late that she loves him. A former child prodigy (Macy) tries to adjust to his lackluster middle age. And an infomercial self-help guru (Cruise) holds male audiences in his thrall while preaching about how to "seduce and destroy" women. As Magnolia blossoms, it reveals the interconnections between these characters as well as the gaping chasms dividing them, not all of which can be bridged.
Although this is an ensemble piece, Cruise has the showiest role and plays it lustily. Recovering nicely after his clueless turn in Eyes Wide Shut, he's a tightly coiled spring of toxic energy wrapped around a core of unresolved hurt. (R)
Bottom Line: Great cast but only semi-great movie
Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh
Movies don't come much prettier than Snow Falling on Cedars, but they sure do come more fast-paced and more involving. This meditative (read numbingly slow) tale of love, murder and ethnic prejudice in the Pacific Northwest of 1954 includes endless scenes of, yes, snow falling on cedars, snow falling on farm fields and snow falling on the movie's morose protagonist (Hawke), a newspaperman and World War II vet. He's still in love with the Japanese-American girl (Kudoh) who left him behind when she and her family were trundled off to an internment camp during the war. Now her husband, also of Japanese ancestry, is on trial for a murder he says he didn't commit. As Hawke covers the trial, his past and present converge as he tries to resolve his conflicted emotions about Kudoh and their lost romance.
Snow Falling, based on a bestselling 1994 novel by David Guterson, finds director Scott Hicks, whose first feature film was Shine (1996), suffering sophomore slump. Snow's chilly scenes of winter fail to melt the heart. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: A long, cold, very slow winter
Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg
At the same time that her contemporaries were heading off to college in 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen (Ryder) was signing herself into a psychiatric hospital after trying to cure a headache by downing a bottle of aspirin with a vodka chaser. Done that, bin there, one might say.
Girl, Interrupted is based on a 1993 memoir of the same name by Kaysen about her years of living madly. The film heads into manic overdrive toward the end but is for the most part a well-acted, sensitive portrait of a troubled young woman's journey back to emotional well-being. In a role that makes perfect use of her edgy fragility, Ryder registers more strongly than she has in recent films. As a psychopathic pal, Jolie (The Bone Collector) again proves mesmerizing, while Goldberg nicely underplays her role as a sympathetic supervisor. (R)
Bottom Line: Mad in a good way
Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner
Featured attraction
Even in Victorian London, there was no business like show business, according to this wonderful movie from British director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies). Topsy-Turvy is the visually opulent yet nitty-gritty, blow-by-blow backstage account of how composer Arthur Sullivan and librettist W.S. Gilbert, the team behind The Pirates of Penzance, wrote one of their greatest operettas, 1885's The Mikado, a whimsical Japanese fantasy. The movie begins with a brazenly mundane shot of ushers routinely checking under seats; it ends 2 hours and 43 minutes later with The Mikado's leading lady, Leonora Braham (Shirley Henderson), alone onstage, raising goose bumps with a meltingly pretty "The Sun Whose Rays," which she sings with girlish flirtatiousness and a hint of womanly sorrow.
She's but one of dozens of characters—producers, actors, choristers, musicians—made flesh-and-blood in their touching vanity and hard professional drive. You don't have to give a fig about G&S to love this emotionally vibrant film. (It inspired me to go out and buy a Mikado CD, and I still haven't been able to get through the whole thing.) The great artist here is Mike Leigh. (R)
Bottom Line: Curtain up—and up and up
>Anna and the King Jodie Foster and charmingly sexy Chow Yun-Fat star in a nonmusical version of The King and I—miss those songs—about the English widow who travels to Thailand to teach the emperor's kids. Only okay. (PG-13)
Any Given Sunday The plot, with its aging quarterback (Dennis Quaid), rifle-armed young rival (Jamie Foxx) and veteran coach (Al Pacino), is as patchy as real stadium grass after a long season, but director Oliver Stone snazzes up the on-field action with jittery camera work and ear-splitting sound effects. (R)
The Cider House Rules In a compelling coming-of-age drama based on a John Irving novel, a young man (Tobey Maguire) sets out from his home in a Maine orphanage to see the world. Michael Caine gives a beautifully modulated performance as the orphanage's M.D., a benevolent father figure. (PG-13)
Galaxy Quest Silly fun. Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver portray ex-stars of a Star Trek-like TV series with little to do but appear at fan conventions. Until, that is, real aliens seek their help. Played for laughs—and gets 'em. (PG)
The Talented Mr. Ripley Matt Damon adeptly plays a clever psychopath intent on reinventing himself in director Anthony Minghella's stylish adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's thriller. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow costar. (R)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
