(R, 179 min.)
Late December release
From director Paul Thomas Anderson who brought us “Boogie Nights,” this time back with another intricately woven group of California wanderers whose lives join and miss in present-day San Fernando Valley.
Late December release
From director Paul Thomas Anderson who brought us “Boogie Nights,” this time back with another intricately woven group of California wanderers whose lives join and miss in present-day San Fernando Valley.
Unlike “Boogie Nights,” the focus isn’t porn stars, but parents and children interlocking with anger and remorse, love and hate — you name it. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the caring nurse to the dying older Jason Robards who is tended by a younger wife in the form of Julianne Moore. Tom Cruise as a strutting high-priced guru. William H. Macy a washed-up former child genius who drowns his sorrows from a barstool where he watches quiz show host Philip Baker Hall. Unlike Anderson’s previous flick, this mirrors more of a Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” with an edgier tone.
The hype is that boyish and charming Tom Cruise has found a role that will do for him what “Pulp Fiction” did for John Travolta.