Anderson made an aching, yearning three-hour epic about lost souls in LA’s San Fernando Valley, culminating in a nutty, biblical-level frog deluge.

Magnolia is operatic in its ambition, a great, joyous leap into melodrama and coincidence, with ragged emotions, crimes and punishments, deathbed scenes, romantic dreams, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music.

While not as fully realized as Anderson's last movie, Boogie Nights, Magnolia is filmed with the same skillful abandon, and takes many more artistic risks... The result is a movie as fascinating for its flaws as for its considerable successes.

Because in a world where it can rain frogs, nothing that already happened gets to be the last word. And Magnolia – a film obsessed with the idea that the past is never finished with you – cuts to black on the exact instant somebody decides to try anyway.