green_athena

This is *exactly* the type of film that I love. Intertwining lives and the psychological consequences. However, I found this film actually fell a little flat. It had an absolutely Great beginning. It had a pretty good ending. The cast was good. Tom Cruise puts in the most amazing performance of his career to date. But the entire long middle ... it was a struggle to sit through it all. I had to fight off urges to give up on it, or fast forward to the end. The film did not grip me, and I simply failed to find any character to connect to. The director was trying very hard to build it up as "coincidental meetings" and their affect on lives ...but it just didn't reach past that normal-movie-characters interacting with each other level. There didn't seem to be anything too terribly coincidental about it. The closest you come is a meeting of a cop with a druggie. Both "main" characters and that One is happenstance enough to land on the "coincidental" level. Just one.

To me, a good example of coincidental movie character moments is a scene in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" in which main characters from two seperate plot lines accidentally get photo's mixed up at a booth. That's good coincidence. A different example would be Mike Figgis' "Timecode", in which many characters interact with each other as they pass by each other, several of which you would not have guessed knew each other until they interact.

Magnolia ? Something in their interactions just "falls flat" of that coincidence line. However, there are some very powerful scenes, mostly near the end. All in all, the film is worth the rental price just to see Tom Cruise show us he can actually act.

There is something very brutally honest about the acting of Peter Mullan. There's a sort of untamed undertone of violence sizzling at his seams that burns through the characters he portrays. Mr. Mullan has the unique ability to seem very gentle, but on the edge of bursting at any moment. Match that with the directing ability of Ken Loach, and you've one very believable, intense film!

I had a great deal of fun with this video. I rented in on VHS, and am now buying it (DVD for the soundtrack control). I watched the film twice over, and caught so many more things the second time than the first. The first part of the viewing you spend trying to figure out how all these characters connect to each other, and then you relax into the flow of them popping in and out of various corners of the screen. Amazing timing ...just Amazing timing for one-take. Julian Sands' entire purpose in the film seems to be to distract the other actors and see if they get lost. This makes his background-character entertaining. I found myself backing the film up several times in certain places because as I was paying attension one thing, I suddenly realized the scene was slowly changing in another corner and I was like "wait a minute...what's happening over _there_..?". Over-all, the four simultanious corners of action are not that hard to follow. Mike Figgis uses sound to take you every place you need to go to figure out what is happening. I found the performances of Jeanne Tripplehorn and Saffron Burrows particulary well done. Both are on screen through most of the film and keep up character perfectly. Not a film for people who do not like to use their mind while watching. Mike Figgis does not spoon-feed his viewers (thank you). All in all very inventive and well done !