Reviews

I don't know where to begin with this awful mess of a movie. I know it's supposed to be "kids and family" oriented, but that shouldn't be an excuse for horrific, irresponsible film making! How do movies like this get distribution?? I have seen first time student films of better quality and production value than this.

The story and dialogue is an incoherent mess. The sound editing sounds like a mix wasn't even attempted. The cinematography is less than amateurish, I have never seen so many washed out, overexposed shots in one movie in my entire life. I've seen better acting in soft-core porns.

The most disturbing thing to me is that this movie had a 9.4 rating on IMDb, which is the only reason I even attempted to view this disgrace of a film. Granted, it was only out of 33 votes, but I figured if 30+ people had seen this movie and taken the time to go on this site and give it a "10" rating, that it had to at least be worth checking out, even if it turned out to not be that amazing.

This is a clear example of friends, cast, and crew of this film just logging on and giving it a "10". Hopefully my vote of "1", and all the other inevitable "1's" to follow from people who unfortunately see this film, bring the average down to a number that accurately represents the hideousness of this disgusting spectacle.

I'll begin this review by saying I didn't dislike this film. It was well acted, and looked very very good for an independent film. I guess I just felt like I knew everything that was going to happen before it did. At the beginning of the movie, the scenes seemed very trite and underdeveloped; after a few lines of dialogue and a couple of cuts, we're abruptly taken away to the next part of the story. Because of this rushed feeling to the movie, I never got to know the supporting characters, who had plenty of potential for further development.

The one thing I find redeeming about this film is the tension that builds between the two leads. The filmmaker does a good job of teasing the audience time and time again, to the point where I just gave up any hope of them getting together. She successfully took the film to a point where she could take one of two routes: they end up together, or they never take that chance. The choice she makes works for the tone of the film, even if the ending is a tad abrupt.

All in all, the filmmaker definitely has talent, I just wish there was less ambiguity in the narrative and more character development.

The Short and the Short of It:

-this film tries so hard to tell a story unconventionally, which it kinda does, but the story itself is extremely conventional.

-half of the dialogue is spoken directly to the camera, or "the audience". It is meant to be charming and sweet and witty but in actuality becomes annoying, overused, and ineffective.

-any time something comes along that can be considered a cliché, the "hero" specifically acknowledges this cliché and says something to the effect of "we're going to avoid this plot development, as it is a cliché". Well, "hero", you've actually magnified the problem, because if the "audience" didn't happen to catch it the first time, you went ahead and spelled it out for them immediately afterwards.

BOTTOM LINE......don't waste you time.

I just saw this film in Cannes, and Miranda July just won the Camera D'Or for best first feature. I think the jurors were right on for giving this film an award. It's a simple film that creates identifiable and likable characters that are all loosely connected. I suppose there is one central story line, but the film's strength lies in the individual scenes and interactions between these characters. July successfully depicts the innocence of childhood, the sexual curiosity of teenagers, and the complex emotions of adulthood through personal and original stories and situations. I don't want to give a lot away but simply recommend anyone reading this to at least give it a shot. You'll either love it or hate it, but I think the majority of you will love it.

what can I say about Magnolia...besides the fact that it is three and a half hours of pure cinematic beauty. Paul Thomas Anderson personifies what I search for in a director: he has an obsessive and meticulous attention to detail, and his stories always involve very round characters where no single one can steal the spotlight from the other, which is especially the case here in Magnolia. His cast not only includes some of my personal favorites in the business (William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman) but he demands and ultimately receives jaw dropping performances from each and every one of them. I saw an interview with him, where he said that the whole idea that was Magnolia began with an image in his head of the final shot, of a woman looking up to the camera and smiling, which almost creeps me out, because the 5 or 6 times that I saw the movie, prior to seeing the interview, that one final shot moved me more than any other sequence in the entire film, it still moved me to tears each consecutive time I saw it. The level of detail that surrounds this interweaving of characters and relationships amazes and frustrates me as well, for when I sit down to write, the first thing I try to emulate is Magnolia's style and structure, but 30 minutes later I'm trying a new approach because this is an act that is impossible to live up to and will never be matched.