Tom Cruise

[9] Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson follows Boogie Nights with another sprawling emotional epic full of spectacular acting and rich directorial style. The screenplay is an exercise in whimsical allegory, connecting the lives of nine different characters in a sometimes obtuse retelling of the Exodus story, complete with an audacious, climactic rain of frogs. The many characters and subplots are held together remarkably well through Anderson’s …

[9] The story covers a lot of ground and time, but its the characters that I find most intriguing in Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel. Lestat, Luis, and young Claudia are vampires, but take away their fangs and coffins, and you have a surrogate family steeped in homoerotic and incestuous desire. The movie is best when the family is together, a little less …

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