Magnolia

In order to like P.T. Anderson's Magnolia, it's pretty much essential that you like P.T. Anderson. He has a very particular style, consisting of intrusive music, fantastical storylines and plots that can be adequately described in just one or two sentences. He's easy to love and even easier to hate. In 1999 he released Magnolia, a three hour melodrama with a star studded cast and an ineresting though slightly scrambled message - there's no such thing as coincidences.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that this is not a film you will particularly enjoy watching. And if you're not going to enjoy it, why bother? Well, if nothing else it's worth seeing for fantastic performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Philip Baker Hall, William H.Macy, John C. Reilly and Melora Walters, as well as an Oscar nominated turn from Tom Cruise, who gives by far the best performance of his career. And if you manage to make it through two and a half hours of misery, sorrow and heartbreak, you'll be rewarded with a wonderfully bizarre sequence in which thousands of frogs fall from the sky and hail onto our now very familiar characters.

Magnolia is not a masterpiece, nor is it one of Anderson's best films. But it is a deeply emotionally effecting film that works on several levels and proves movies don't always have to follow a set path - filmmakers can dare to be different. ****1/2 out of 5.