Jason Robards and Philip Baker Hall play dying fathers who in their final hours attempt to reconcile with their estranged offspring. The movie's unifying theme, also biblical, effectively albeit none too subtly demonstrates that the sins of the father (and the enabling mother) are visited upon the child. Parma's, Kurring's and Mackey's stories intersect with the other protagonists' through their parents' histories, the omnipresent media and most outrageously via a climactic plague straight out of Exodus. He's more missionary than officer of the law, and along with Phil Parma, the nurse played by fellow 'Boogie Nighter' Philip Seymour Hoffman, is one of the picture's two pure souls. Last seen as a drug-popping porn star in 'Boogie Nights,' Reilly demonstrates his sensitive side as a clean-living policeman.

Some characters are more interesting than others, like Mackey and Jim Kurring, an endearingly inept cop wonderfully portrayed by John C. I could have spent a couple of hours just watching Mackey, but there are eight other stories in the naked city, and even at three hours running time, Anderson's pressed to squeeze them all in. In one of the film's most electrifying scenes, Mackey agrees to an interview with a sleek TV magazine reporter (the assured April Grace), who cuts through his macho posturing with the surgical precision of a seasoned mohel.

He preaches the gospel of phallic supremacy ('seduce and destroy') and teaches its lifestyle mechanics at high-priced, seriously pornographic seminars.

He is sexy, funny, infuriating and, yes, vulnerable in the role of Frank Mackey, a strutting self-help guru with a feminist-infuriating mission. He hasn't danced in his underpants since 1983's 'Risky Business,' but he does it here with mischievous energy. In this episodic look at nine troubled Southern Californians, coincidentally interrelated, Cruise is preeminent. None is more besotted than Tom Cruise, who's sure to open eyes that were wide shut with his blistering turn in this edgy, messy, wildly ambitious portrait of American angst. 'Magnolia,' Paul Thomas Anderson's frenzied follow-up to 'Boogie Nights,' can be as intoxicating as the flower it's named for, and its characters, most of them as flawed and fascinating as the film itself, seem intoxicated by the overpowering scent. Macy plays a former child genius in 'Magnolia.'

Movie magnolia soundtrack