Magnolia

"Strange things happen all the time." Like a suicide turned homicide by a quirk of timing. A motivational speaker motivated by rage. A quiz kid rendered stupid by a lightning strike. Strange things like dying badly, living worse, finding redemption - or like the lives of disparate, desperate people unexpectedly interlocking on one astonishing day. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, who would later show his mastery of the decades-spanning epic with There Will Be Blood, here guides a superb ensemble cast and turns the events of a single day into epic filmmaking.