'Magnolia' in Ikebukuro!

Magnolia at the Shin Bungeiza. Photo by Brett Homenick.

I just got back from a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999) at the Shin Bungeiza theater in Ikebukuro. It was a flawless digital projection that had a few fun trailers running before it -- most notably that of Zardoz (1974), which I also saw not too long ago at the same theater.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson had an impressive run of films between Boogie Nights (1997) and There Will Be Blood (2007), but (in my humble opinion, of course) everything else he has directed ranges from forgettable to lousy. This was my first time to see Magnolia in a movie theater, and, while I would still say that I enjoyed it, I can't say I liked it as much as I have in the past.

The three-hour runtime really started to wear me out. I thought Julianne Moore's performance was overwrought and actually pretty bad. Some of the story lines go on too long and just aren't that interesting to begin with. (Do we really need two separate stories about famous fathers with estranged children?) Things could have been trimmed down and improved.

I'd still give it a recommendation, but not as strong as I would have expected. One other note: The CG frogs falling at the end of the movie looked pretty bad on the big screen. You can't really tell on a TV screen, but -- boy, oh, boy! -- did it look unconvincing in the theater.