Ackland Film Forum: “Magnolia” (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

Magnolia
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999

Introduced by Aspect: Journal of Film & Screen Media

Everything uncannily intersects in Magnolia: the past, the present, emotional traumas, diseases, network television, crimes, false representations, family disasters, geography of the San Fernando Valley, Biblical plagues, whirling camera movements, and more. P.T. Anderson’s operatic melodrama is one of the quirkiest and most audacious entries in 1990s American cinema, with throwbacks to 1970s-era work by Sidney Lumet and Robert Altman. The star-studded ensemble cast includes Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, and other faces you will recognize. Along with Eyes Wide Shut from the same year, Magnolia is one of the most curious and unsettling performances by Cruise, who, at least in 1999, embraced vulnerability and self-critique.

This Fall’s Ackland Film Forum series, Nineties Flashback, is presented by the Ackland Art Museum and the UNC Film Studies Program, part of the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature.

Reserve your FREE TICKET below!

For UNC Students: All Ackland Film Forum screenings are part of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Campus Life Experience program. Scan the QR code at the event for CLE credit.