I went to this movie with no expectations; I've gotten middling reviews from friends, bewildering opinions from professional reviewers, and the positive comparisons to "American Beauty" (which I hated) didn't salt my appetite. But I had 3 hours to kill. I did not expect to become so enraptured with P.T. Andersen's kaleidoscopic narrative, so involved with his characters, so moved by the seemingly off-handed novelistic sophistication belied by the film's naturalism. The film's structure is beguilingly simple, taking an hour each to build, maintain, and denoue: its second hour is a breathtakingly sustained hour of unrelenting narrative suspense. Now, now that I'm not watching the movie, I can pick at its nits; but I must admit that, while watching it, I was absolutely transported.
Review of Magnolia
