An intriguing and entertaining study in characters going through varying levels of crisis and introspection. This psychological drama leads you in several different directions, weaving and intersecting various subplots and characters, from a brilliant Tom Cruise, as a self-proclaimed pied-piper, to a child forced to go on a TV game show and the pressures he faces from a ruthless father.

"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.