So I watched Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia for the first time the other night. I liked it, I liked almost all of it, I liked the part people usually take issue with if they have an issue with it (the sing-along), in fact, I will just say that I liked all of it. But one little thing kiiiiiiinda bothers me. Slightly. Slightly.
It's touted as being a film about a bunch of intersecting lives, especially with the intro about several different more-than-just-coincidental incidents. But the lives in Magnolia don't seem all that ironically interwoven to me. Yeah, they're kind of related - the people on a television show have some shit going on in their individual lives, the show is produced by a guy and the guy has a son. So?
P.T.A. seems to like sprawling ensembles, which is great. I just don't see how the lives in Magnolia are any more significantly interrelated than the lives in, say, Boogie Nights, such that it warrants the "eerie coincidence" narrations by Ricky Jay.
I liked those narrated bits, though. I'd watch a PBS special that consisted of nothing but eerie documented coincidences narrated by Ricky Jay. I like that Neil Flynn is in the movie for about two seconds. I just wish it had something more to do with the movie it's in.
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