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Magnolia
DVD Review by Yanman |
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"This is the scene of the movie, where the guy tries to get ahold of the long-lost son….See this is the scene of the movie where you help me out." Sometimes big budget movies go over the top, they just go a little to far. While this may be the case with Magnolia, we are just not sure… Why? Because for the most part, we had no idea where the story was coming from or for that matter where it was headed. Ok, you say, then why did it win so many awards? Not sure…it was well acted, well give it that, and directing must have been hard, and also well done. But still the question remains, shouldn't the plot of the movie be easy to figure out? So with that we will try our best to explain Magnolia. The story opens with accounts of the absurd, the kinds of the stories that have circulated around the Internet. Take this one for instance … A man attempting to take his own life jumps off the top of a building to attempt his own suicide, some thing strange happens on the way to the bottom however. His own mother shoots him with a shotgun out a window. Now she wasn't aiming at him, she was aiming at his father. They have been fighting for years and the gun (Normally empty) is always used as a idle threat. But how did the gun get loaded? Well you see the son loaded it so that he could put an end to the fighting. It was the fighting that led the son to want to take his own life. So now the question is, was this an attempted suicide, a suicide, or a murder? If you think that this is a weird story just wait till you meet the other nut cases in this movie! There is the T.V. infomercial salesperson (Tom Cruise), his dieing father (Jason Robards), his stepmother (Julianne Moore), the game show host (Philip Baker Hall), his current contestant (Jeremy Blackman), a pervious child quiz kid contestant that is down on his luck (William H. Macy), a cop (John C. Reilly) and his narcotic laced girlfriend (Melora Walters). Suffice it to say that you will not like any of them. The 5.1 Dolby digital audio is subtle and mostly presented from the front. While most of the audio is quiet through most of the movie, it adds to the effect of the noise in the final reel. The Anamorphic widescreen picture is presented in the unique aspect ratio of 2.40:1. The video is crystal clear, without any noticeable flaws. The colors are perfectly saturated; at least where there are colors, and the blacks are very deep. As a two disc set we were expecting a lot more extras. There are really only three or four extras here, with only one worth mentioning. The "magnolia diary" is a documentary about the making of the film by Mark Rance, which is worth a watch. As far as box sets extras go this one gets an F for "Few". There are a lot of different movies out there, almost as many as there
are opinions. We always try to not to force our outlook on our readers.
This is one of those cases were you really should form your own viewpoint;
just remember if you don't get it, we warned you! Don't forget to bring an
umbrella!
This DVD was reviewed on Yanman.com's Reference Theater #1, using a Toshiba SD-5109 DVD player, Toshiba TW56X81, and M&K 750 THX Speakers. Panamax protects all systems at Yanman.com. |
Magnolia Shouldn't the plot of the movie be easy to figure out? Staring: Tom Cruise Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson Running time: 188 minutes Bonus Materials
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