Lists
- ranked 2 in Roger Ebert's Best Films of 1999
- ranked 36 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (2003)
- ranked 89 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 94 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
- ranked 176 in The IMDb Top 250
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear Winners
Supposedly Paul Thomas Anderson's magnum opus, Magnolia is a 3-hour tapestry of interrelated stories which I watched under such poor circumstances (i.e. sleep deprived on an aeroplane) that I can't entirely trust my judgement, but nevertheless it did not entirely work for me. As is often the case with these ensemble films, none of the characters gets time to be more than a sketch, and their interleaved stories seem less about the magic of shared connection than the accidental superposition of private miseries.