This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
According to my 1999 journal, my entire reaction to Magnolia—my 376th theatrical screening of the year—was: “Great fucking film. Three fucking hours. Not actually sure why it’s called Magnolia.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but the film had its hooks in me. Just over two weeks later, as 1999 rolled over into 2000 and the digital plague of the prophesied Y2K disaster suddenly and spectacularly failed to cover the lands in darkness, I was watching Magnolia for the…
We see as through a CRT, darkly, the fragility and absurd dignity of the naked human form, with transiently-conscious meatsacks numbing pain with alternating ice and fire as they shamble toward arbitrary goals. Briefly, magically ambulatory, then suddenly, permanently still.
Time-capsule plotting, endlessly and needlessly Byzantine. Betrayal leading to revelation leading fractally to a new cycle as we try to ignore that there is nothing inside the final matryoshka doll, and never was. There is no satisfying end to the…
Breezy character actor driven crime comedy (and, technically, comic book movie) that is at least occasionally actually funny, interspersed with a string of well-executed exhibition bouts.
Stevenson handily steals the movie, but just about everyone gets to nibble amusingly on the scenery for a scene or two. Adkins, thankfully, mostly restrains his tendency to mug for the camera, Stathaming his way through the sub-Ritchie absurdity while still letting you know he's in on the joke.
Crime does not pay, and the wages of sin is death, but goddamn if there aren't transcendent moments amid the transgressions. A gorgeously performed, shot, and edited film that gets away with its sledgehammer thematic beats because it also knows how to wield a razor, sound and image slicing with seemingly no effort until it strikes bone.
However, I'm unfortunately going to be deeply boring, and say that I wish the genre element didn't exist beyond metaphor and magical realism…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
2004–2005
Billy Mitchell:
“The worst thing that could happen would be to give somebody the credibility of a score that doesn’t deserve it. But even far worse than that would be to deny somebody the credibility when they deserved it.”
Steve Wiebe:
“It’s just, I mean, I know to win is like, so important. But to blatantly do things that are against the rules, and know in your heart that you didn’t do it correctly, and get credit for it…what…
You know, I don’t consider myself a bad-movie buff, but occasionally I’ll realize that it’s pushing six in the morning on a Tuesday, and that I’ve just finished watching the German DVD I imported of a universally panned made-for-cable movie credited to Alan Smithee from nearly a quarter century ago, and I’ll think: normal people don’t do this, do they?
As unnecessary sequels to iconic horror properties directed by Rick Rosenthal go, this ain’t Halloween II. Hell, it ain’t even…
