'Magnolia'

Tonally both are very different. Grand Canyon captures the vibe of early 90's suburbia like no other film. It's also much less stylized and expressionistic in terms of lighting and camera movement than Magnolia is (which I don't think is a bad thing). GC also has a very poignant plot thread involving teenagers and first love -- something which has no analogue in Magnolia (a film with no teenagers). GC is very character centric like Magnolia, but has more of a social agenda; Magnolia gestures toward issues of race/class with the Orlando Jones stuff, most of which was cut out, but seems to take a fundamentally apolitical stance (which some prefer, I guess), while GC might come across as preachy. I think many would argue GC has aged poorly, and is a product of its time -- I won't argue with that, but I happen to like its atmosphere

Magnolia is more technically impressive; of the two, it's the one made by the more assured filmmaker, but that doesn't necessarily make it better. I think GC can more aptly be compared to Short Cuts -- a movie made around the same time, with a similar (but by no means identical) look and atmosphere. GC feels symptomatic of its time -- with respect to its style, its characters, and its politics (all of which, I think, make it endearing). I think Magnolia (and Short Cuts, to a lesser extent) self-consciously engineered an aesthetic strategy that would avoid this. Magnolia and Short Cuts both look (texturally, visually) like movies made in their respective years, but exude a (perhaps false) kind of 'universality' and 'timelessness'. Grand Canyon is, in many respects, a very timely movie. It's a film that is perhaps not going to appeal to those without a soft spot for the kind of vaguely sentimental, early-90's-LA-liberal-social-problems film that it is