I think some people like the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and some people just don't. Magnolia is a good example. Many people think it's one of the worst films ever made and many others love it. I'm certainly in the "love it" category and at this point (having not yet seen There Will Be Blood) I think it is his best work and my favorite of his films.

As far as having 20 minutes pass with almost no dialogue, I'm fine with that and I've always leaned toward the idea that film is a visual medium first and the best films develop the visual ideas to their best potential to tell the story. Not that I think the words don't matter, they do, but I think with film you can make the words (or lack of words) work with the image. I've always liked films that use dialogue to enhance the story rather than tell the story and I think that's goal with film.

Watch the beginning of The Searchers or Once Upon a Time in the West (where Leone borrows heavily from Ford) and you'll see what I mean. Or The Passenger where Nicholson says almost nothing but you move through several sections of the story and he interacts with people and places. Of course there's always a film like Network where the dialogue is so amazing you could listen to the film without the images and be blown away or Woody Allen films where the dialogue is very important. Anderson is certainly one of those guys that I think values the images and mise en scene as much as the words and those guys tend to be the great filmmakers.