Word: offing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
It's a feat that the writer-director is so utterly successful in conceiving this anti-filmic structure; one of the first rules of screenwriting, mainstream or otherwise, is to surprise the audience by constantly introducing obstacles that prevent a character from achieving his goal. Anderson defies expectation specifically by...
And yet the crosscutting is not a device or a crutch; Magnolia is, in fact, Anderson's most ambitious and assured film to date because he operates without imposing the distance of Hard Eight's hidden motivations or Boogie Nights' campy ludicrousness. There is neither disdain nor caricature in the...
The success of this attempt at full exposure is due in great part to the performances-this is perhaps the most precisely acted ensemble piece ever filmed. Robards, who has mastered the part of the stubborn old grump, is truly great here, shading Earl Partridge with the lowing regret and...
But all this convincing work is cast into the air at the climax, which finally delivers on the earlier promise of incredibility. That the unlikelihood of the film's one giant event operates in tension with the utterly natural progression of its stories isn't a misstep, though. It's...
Magnolia's faithfulness to the surreal irregularity and aimlessness of life is what distinguishes it from its nearest relative, Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Where that film found black social satire in forcing its inhabitants' to collide in a series of chance events, Magnolia opts for an intimate and studied...