Magnolia (1999)

Been a long time since I last watched this but even though this was 3 hours long, never felt the length and I was pretty much captivated throughout (although I did pause a few times to get refill on my drink or grab a snack). The performances all around were great, most notably Tom Cruise, Melora Walters, John C. Reilly and the young Jeremy Blackman (Stanley). It does get heavy-handed and while I "get" the raining frogs scene, that took me out a bit (albeit it was towards the end). **4.0/5**
As a side, the other two kids (Julia and Richard) were hacks, counting on Stanley to carry them. Something that irked me the first time I saw this, lol.

I remember seeing this in the theater with one of my friends, during our first year in college. We had all found our way back to town and... given we lived in the sticks... we ended up going to the movies out of habit and for lack of anything else to do.
And I'll be honest, at the time, I walked out of the theater kind of blown away. I hadn't really seen a movie like that before.
I mean, the closest thing that came to it was American Beauty, and we had only seen that a few months prior... and that had more of a plot.
At the time, I'll admit, I thought it was pretty good.... and then I returned to it and now, honestly, I just think it's pretentious.
Pretentious really is the best way to describe it. When you first see it, it hits you one way because it's an odd movie that you really haven't seen before.
And then, when go back to it, knowing a little more about it, you realize that the plot, the characters, the entire premise of the film is about as thin and transparent as a white chiffon shirt in a wet t-shirt contest.
The presentation was there, but that's really all it was. Presentation and vapidness. It's show and tell with no real tell and the hopes that frogs might get the audience thinking enough to distract them away from the fact that there's no substance beyond the presentation.