This week, we realize that everything is connected in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Is this the best cast that Cruise has ever worked with? How does redemption clash with guilt in our understanding of this film’s metaphysics? Is Magnolia a work of genius?

Content warning: nudity, suicide, violence, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children, drugs, alcohol, blood and gore, dead animals

Unanswered Questions:

• How does the film engage and alienate the audience?
  
  
• What, if anything, are we supposed to take from the return of Jim’s gun?
  
  
• Is this the best performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman?
  

Further reading:

• Seduce & Destroy Infomercial
  
  
• Aimee Mann
  
  
• The Last Star In Hollywood Definitive List Of Tom Cruise Films
  
  
• The Last Star In Hollywood: Production Schedule
  

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Join us next time as we make it through the roughest spot in Cruise’s biggest franchise: John Woo’s 2000 spy thriller Mission: Impossible 2!

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