This 3-Hour Movie With 82% On RT Earned Tom Cruise His Last Oscar Nomination & He Deserved To Win

One of Tom Cruise’s all-time great performances can be found in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia. While Cruise has become a monolithic figure in the action genre over the last decade or more, he has starred in dozens of dramas and several comedies throughout the years, some of which include A Few Good Men (1992), Rain Man (1988), Collateral (2004), American Made (2017), The Firm (1993), and Tropic Thunder (2008). Thanks to Cruise’s latest deal with Warner Bros. and modern interest in returning to dramas, Cruise could be the closest to eyeing his first Oscar win after last being nominated in 1999.
Cruise had originally starred in more traditional dramas, comedies, and other genre films before the meteoric rise of his Mission: Impossible and Top: Gun franchises. He made his feature film debut in the tragic romantic drama Endless Love (1981) before rising to prominence as the star of Risky Business (1983), The Color of Money (1986), and the original Top Gun (1986). Cruise has been nominated for 3 Best Actor Oscars for Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), and Magnolia (1999). Cruise has also starred in some impressive sci-fi movies, such as 2013’s Oblivion, 2013’s Edge of Tomorrow, and 2002’s Minority Report.
Magnolia Was Tom Cruise’s Last Acting Oscar Nomination – What It’s About
Magnolia was Paul Thomas Anderson’s third directorial effort
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Magnolia toys with concepts of fate and coincidence to create an elaborate web of intersectionality between several robust characters.
Magnolia is one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s best movies with a stellar ensemble cast featuring Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Patton Oswalt, and more. Magnolia was the third directorial effort by PTA after 1997’s Boogie Nights starring Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds and his feature film debut Hard Eight (1996). Anderson, who has been nominated for 11 Oscars for There Will Be Blood (2007), Inherent Vice (2014), Phantom Thread (2017), and Licorice Pizza (2021), is currently working on an untitled film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that is currently scheduled for a 2025 release.
With a 3-hour and 8-minute runtime, Magnolia is a truly unique viewing experience described as a psychological and dramatic epic. It’s one of those films that feature several characters in various scenarios that are seemingly unrelated to each other but ultimately overlap in meaningful ways by the film’s ending. The film takes place over the course of 24 hours in Los Angeles and toys with concepts of fate and coincidence to create an elaborate web of intersectionality between several robust characters. Magnolia is best viewed without knowing too much beforehand, as all of the characters experience life-changing events for better and for worse.
Why Tom Cruise Deserved The Oscar For Magnolia
Frank Mackey remains one of the most complex characters of Cruise’s career
Cruise had just recently come off starring in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut before starring in Magnolia , so his natural progression to a Paul Thomas Anderson film certainly trends.
Tom Cruise plays one of several integral characters in Magnolia but is unsurprisingly one of the most memorable in the leading role. Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, an aggressive dating guru in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles with a ridiculous and over-the-top approach to dating. A victim of generational trauma which has made him a highly misogynistic adult, Mackey comes up with his own philosophy and approach to dating and tries to inspire other disenfranchised men to follow in his footsteps by