INHERENT VICE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at an indie art house near me:

INHERENT VICE

(Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

In a recent interview on Marc Maron?s WTF podcast, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed he wasn?t a stoner, that he really didn?t get stoned. 

Well, INHERENT VICE, Anderson?s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon?s 2009 comic-noir novel of the same name, coulda fooled me.

It?s such a rambling, sprawling, shaggy dog story with a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous as The Dude would say, all filtered through hazy clouds of pot smoke that it feels like it could?ve only been made by a filmmaker who?s stoned out of his mind.

Of course, my mention of The Dude doesn?t come from out of the blue. The film?s depiction of a countercultural underdog unraveling connections throughout the seedy underworld of Los Angeles heavily recalls the Coen brothers? THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998), as well as Robert Altman?s THE LONG GOODBYE (1973).

Pynchon?s novel seemed to have those references embedded in it as well, and Anderson puts forth a largely faithful take on the original source material, right down to the exact wording of large chunks of the book?s dialogue.

In his second film for Anderson following 2012?s THE MASTER, Joaquin Phoenix plays pothead protagonist Larry ?Doc? Sportello, a long-haired, unkempt sideburns-sporting private investigator living in Gordita Beach, California in 1970. Doc?s ex-girlfriend Shasta (the pretty and appropriately flighty Katherine Waterson) shows up after an absence of over a year, and asks him for his help concerning her current boyfriend, a real estate mogul named Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts).

Mickey?s wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her lover, are working on what Shasta calls ?a creepy little scheme? to have her rich husband committed to a mental institution so that they can make off with his fortune.

From there, Phoenix?s Doc gets hired by The Wire?s Michael Kenneth Williams as a member of the ?Black Guerilla Family? gang to find a white supremacist, named Glenn Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), who happens to be one of Mickey?s bodyguards.

After following a lead that ends up with our extremely high hero getting knocked unconscious at a Massage parlor named Chick Planet, Doc is questioned by his long-time cop nemesis, Christian ?Bigfoot? Bjornsen (Josh Brolin, going big and succeeding), a thick-necked, flat-topped, hippie-hating hardass member of the LAPD.

Luckily, Benicio Del Toro as slick marine lawyer Sauncho Smilax swoops in to get Doc released, but, unluckily, Shasta and Mickey have completely disappeared into thin air.

As if things weren?t complicated enough, Doc takes on another case that?s possibly related, involving the death of surf-rock saxophonist Coy Harlingen (a whispering Owen Wilson) as his widow Hope (Jena Malone) thinks he?s still alive.

From there, Doc visits with his special lady friend, Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball, played by Phoenix?s WALK THE LINE co-star Reese Witherspoon, gets interrogated by FBI agents (Parenthood?s Sam Jaeger and Veep?s Timothy Simons), and, most amusingly, does cocaine with Martin Short as an coked-up dentist. Doc?s trail keeps leading to some sinister entity called ?Golden Fang,? which is either a mysterious ship for running drugs, an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel, and/or a syndicate of dentists. I?m still not sure which.

Making her film debut, indie singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom serve as the film?s onscreen narrator Sortil?ge, a minor character in the book but here the custodian to descriptions of Doc?s inner thoughts, somewhat surreally I might add.

Which means that one minute, Doc is driving with Sortil?ge riding shotgun telling us about ?the long, sad history of LA land use,? and the next minute she?s gone. The freshness of Newsom's delivery of Pynchon's prose enhances the dry sections of the film considerably.

The fading of the sunny idealistic ?60s into the scary, smacked out ?70s is conveyed strikingly through Robert Elswit?s always stunning cinematography (Elswit has shot 6 of Anderson?s 7 movies), which gives both dark, dank interiors and sun-bleached exteriors a great burnt-out look, and the score by Radiohead?s Johnny Greenwood mixed with well chosen songs by Neil Young, Can, Lex Baxter, and the Chuck Jackson Motown classic ?Any Day Now,? perfectly evokes the era as well.

Unfortunately INHERENT VICE is no masterpiece. It?s frustratingly low energy at times with scenes that linger on and on. Many critics are calling it ?incoherent vice? (there?s a joke I bet will be made at the Oscars) for understandable reasons, but while I sometimes stared at the screen and thought that it was a meandering mess, I was more often struck by the brilliance of many of its moments.

I?ve seen it twice now, and I enjoyed and ?got it? a lot more the second time. Phoenix's performance, which initially bothered me as being half-assed, seemed more nuanced (I could see that he was really using his full ass), and I felt more of a poetry to its slow pace than before.

Being the first ever adaptation of a Pynchon novel ? books that many have said are unfilmable - is no small feat, and I can?t imagine anybody doing a better job with this particular material than Anderson.

Folks who aren?t Anderson or Pynchon fans going in aren?t likely to be won over, especially at its long-ass length of 2 and a half hours, but those who are hip to its vibe and can get into a groove with its stoned tone are likely to think it?s a gas, man. Sorry, to lay that outdated lingo on you, but I bet deep down you dig it.

More later...

No Rationale Makes IRRATIONAL MAN Into Worthwhile Woody Allen

Now playing at an art house near me:

IRRATIONAL MAN (Dir. Woody Allen, 2015)

In my review of Woody Allen?s previous film, 2014's MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT, I proposed that in the last decade or so of Woody Allen's nearly half-century filmmaking career, every other film is worthwhile. However, while his latest, IRRATIONAL MAN, is a considerable improvement over the fluffy, inconsequential rom com MAGIC, I'm seriously re-thinking that theory.

However, it does starts off intriguingly with protagonist Joaquin Phoenix as Abe Lucas, a boozing, tortured philosophy professor arriving at the fictional Braylin College in Rhode Island to teach a summer session. Phoenix?s inner monologue/voice over tells us that he?s hit rock bottom emotionally and existentially, while gossip among the staff and students around campus tells us that that?s exactly what makes him attractive (?I kind of like the burnout look,? we hear a coed tell her friends, who wholeheartedly agree).

Before long, Phoenix?s Abe is spending a lot of time with one of his students, Jill Pollard played by Emma Stone, making her second appearance in an Allen film (MAGIC was her first), and he?s also being pursued by Parker Posey as Rita Richards, an unhappily married science professor.

Abe succumbs to Rita, but his mental hang ups have rendered him impotent. This helps him to resist Jill?s attempts to seduce him, citing that she has a devoted boyfriend who?s more suited for her, the preppy Roy played by Jamie Blackley. Blackley is stuck with one of Allen?s clich?d archetypes ? the nice guy boyfriend who?s destined to be cheated on.

So for a bit we follow Phoenix and Stone around as they stroll around Braylin (actually Salve Regina University), and Newport discussing the subtleties of situational ethics, and referencing the work of such grand thinkers as Dostoyevsky and Kant. Then an actual plot development occurs ? in a diner they overhear a conversation in which a woman talking with friends about her bitter custody battle. The judge presiding over the case is on her ex-husband?s side, and he?s drawing out the trial in order to bleed the woman dry. ?I hope the judge gets cancer,? she exclaims, but Abe, stricken by what he hears, starts to hatch a plan in his head.

Abe, believing that he has finally found a meaningful act that will snap him out of his despair, schemes to murder the judge. He figures that his lack of motive and connection to the involved parties will make this the perfect crime, and that the world will be a better place without the corrupt judge. This decision changes Abe?s outlook on life radically, and the scenes in which he plots his victim?s demise are the most compelling in the movie ? aided in no small part by the well utilized lively piano jazz of the Ramsey Lewis Trio on the soundtrack.

Abe secures cyanide to do the deed by stealing Rita?s key to the college?s chem lab, and stalks the judge so that he can learn his routine. Early on a Saturday morning, Abe is able to successfully poison the judge?s orange juice while he?s taking a break from running to read the paper on a park bench.

Initially, it looks like Abe has indeed committed the perfect murder as the judge?s death is considered to be by heart attack, but days later an autopsy detects the cyanide. Both Jill and Rita begin to suspect Abe, especially after certain clues start piling up that point to his guilt. Jill confronts Abe and he confesses the crime to her, but sticks to his stance that the murder was morally justified. Then its announced that the police have a suspect and Abe has to deal with the fact that an innocent man may take the fall.

As similar situations have happened in Allen?s work before ? most notably in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and MATCH POINT ? it can appear that the 79-year old writer/director is obsessed with whether murder can be gotten away with or if we live in a moral universe where that?s impossible. Problem is that he?s handled these themes much better before (especially in CRIMES which it appears he's remade several times now) and in this effort it feels a lot like he?s yet again treading water.

Underneath all the talky philosophizing, there's no interesting ideas that are being expressed in Allen's screenplay. It's pretty by-the-numbers stuff narratively, and its ending is an unsatisfyingly rushed wrap-up. The love story angle, whether it's between Phoenix and Stone or Phoenix and Posey, is fairly unaffecting as well.

But it does feature some fine, appealing acting - Phoenix?s lived-in performance as Abe, a guy who's into Russian novelists and Russian roulette, beautifully conveys a kind of meticulous messiness, Stone makes an energetic effort in embodying Jill, and Posey makes the most out of a underwritten role. On another plus side, returning cinematographer Darius Khondji, who shot Allen's TO ROME WITH LOVE, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT gives the film a great, lush look (the town of Newport, Rhode Island never looked better), but there?s just not any there there.

Allen?s 46th film as filmmaker is sadly another weak late period effort. It?s time for me to throw the ?every other one is good? theory out the window, because there?s not a rationale I can think of that makes IRRATIONAL MAN into worthwhile Woody Allen.

More later...

INHERENT VICE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at an indie art house near me:

INHERENT VICE

(Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

In a recent interview on Marc Maron?s WTF podcast, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed he wasn?t a stoner, that he really didn?t get stoned. 

Well, INHERENT VICE, Anderson?s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon?s 2009 comic-noir novel of the same name, coulda fooled me.

It?s such a rambling, sprawling, shaggy dog story with a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous as The Dude would say, all filtered through hazy clouds of pot smoke that it feels like it could?ve only been made by a filmmaker who?s stoned out of his mind.

Of course, my mention of The Dude doesn?t come from out of the blue. The film?s depiction of a countercultural underdog unraveling connections throughout the seedy underworld of Los Angeles heavily recalls the Coen brothers? THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998), as well as Robert Altman?s THE LONG GOODBYE (1973).

Pynchon?s novel seemed to have those references embedded in it as well, and Anderson puts forth a largely faithful take on the original source material, right down to the exact wording of large chunks of the book?s dialogue.

In his second film for Anderson following 2012?s THE MASTER, Joaquin Phoenix plays pothead protagonist Larry ?Doc? Sportello, a long-haired, unkempt sideburns-sporting private investigator living in Gordita Beach, California in 1970. Doc?s ex-girlfriend Shasta (the pretty and appropriately flighty Katherine Waterson) shows up after an absence of over a year, and asks him for his help concerning her current boyfriend, a real estate mogul named Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts).

Mickey?s wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her lover, are working on what Shasta calls ?a creepy little scheme? to have her rich husband committed to a mental institution so that they can make off with his fortune.

From there, Phoenix?s Doc gets hired by The Wire?s Michael Kenneth Williams as a member of the ?Black Guerilla Family? gang to find a white supremacist, named Glenn Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), who happens to be one of Mickey?s bodyguards.

After following a lead that ends up with our extremely high hero getting knocked unconscious at a Massage parlor named Chick Planet, Doc is questioned by his long-time cop nemesis, Christian ?Bigfoot? Bjornsen (Josh Brolin, going big and succeeding), a thick-necked, flat-topped, hippie-hating hardass member of the LAPD.

Luckily, Benicio Del Toro as slick marine lawyer Sauncho Smilax swoops in to get Doc released, but, unluckily, Shasta and Mickey have completely disappeared into thin air.

As if things weren?t complicated enough, Doc takes on another case that?s possibly related, involving the death of surf-rock saxophonist Coy Harlingen (a whispering Owen Wilson) as his widow Hope (Jena Malone) thinks he?s still alive.

From there, Doc visits with his special lady friend, Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball, played by Phoenix?s WALK THE LINE co-star Reese Witherspoon, gets interrogated by FBI agents (Parenthood?s Sam Jaeger and Veep?s Timothy Simons), and, most amusingly, does cocaine with Martin Short as an coked-up dentist. Doc?s trail keeps leading to some sinister entity called ?Golden Fang,? which is either a mysterious ship for running drugs, an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel, and/or a syndicate of dentists. I?m still not sure which.

Making her film debut, indie singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom serve as the film?s onscreen narrator Sortil?ge, a minor character in the book but here the custodian to descriptions of Doc?s inner thoughts, somewhat surreally I might add.

Which means that one minute, Doc is driving with Sortil?ge riding shotgun telling us about ?the long, sad history of LA land use,? and the next minute she?s gone. The freshness of Newsom's delivery of Pynchon's prose enhances the dry sections of the film considerably.

The fading of the sunny idealistic ?60s into the scary, smacked out ?70s is conveyed strikingly through Robert Elswit?s always stunning cinematography (Elswit has shot 6 of Anderson?s 7 movies), which gives both dark, dank interiors and sun-bleached exteriors a great burnt-out look, and the score by Radiohead?s Johnny Greenwood mixed with well chosen songs by Neil Young, Can, Lex Baxter, and the Chuck Jackson Motown classic ?Any Day Now,? perfectly evokes the era as well.

Unfortunately INHERENT VICE is no masterpiece. It?s frustratingly low energy at times with scenes that linger on and on. Many critics are calling it ?incoherent vice? (there?s a joke I bet will be made at the Oscars) for understandable reasons, but while I sometimes stared at the screen and thought that it was a meandering mess, I was more often struck by the brilliance of many of its moments.

I?ve seen it twice now, and I enjoyed and ?got it? a lot more the second time. Phoenix's performance, which initially bothered me as being half-assed, seemed more nuanced (I could see that he was really using his full ass), and I felt more of a poetry to its slow pace than before.

Being the first ever adaptation of a Pynchon novel ? books that many have said are unfilmable - is no small feat, and I can?t imagine anybody doing a better job with this particular material than Anderson.

Folks who aren?t Anderson or Pynchon fans going in aren?t likely to be won over, especially at its long-ass length of 2 and a half hours, but those who are hip to its vibe and can get into a groove with its stoned tone are likely to think it?s a gas, man. Sorry, to lay that outdated lingo on you, but I bet deep down you dig it.

More later...

No Rationale Makes IRRATIONAL MAN Into Worthwhile Woody Allen

Now playing at an art house near me:

IRRATIONAL MAN (Dir. Woody Allen, 2015)

In my review of Woody Allen?s previous film, 2014's MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT, I proposed that in the last decade or so of Woody Allen's nearly half-century filmmaking career, every other film is worthwhile. However, while his latest, IRRATIONAL MAN, is a considerable improvement over the fluffy, inconsequential rom com MAGIC, I'm seriously re-thinking that theory.

However, it does starts off intriguingly with protagonist Joaquin Phoenix as Abe Lucas, a boozing, tortured philosophy professor arriving at the fictional Braylin College in Rhode Island to teach a summer session. Phoenix?s inner monologue/voice over tells us that he?s hit rock bottom emotionally and existentially, while gossip among the staff and students around campus tells us that that?s exactly what makes him attractive (?I kind of like the burnout look,? we hear a coed tell her friends, who wholeheartedly agree).

Before long, Phoenix?s Abe is spending a lot of time with one of his students, Jill Pollard played by Emma Stone, making her second appearance in an Allen film (MAGIC was her first), and he?s also being pursued by Parker Posey as Rita Richards, an unhappily married science professor.

Abe succumbs to Rita, but his mental hang ups have rendered him impotent. This helps him to resist Jill?s attempts to seduce him, citing that she has a devoted boyfriend who?s more suited for her, the preppy Roy played by Jamie Blackley. Blackley is stuck with one of Allen?s clich?d archetypes ? the nice guy boyfriend who?s destined to be cheated on.

So for a bit we follow Phoenix and Stone around as they stroll around Braylin (actually Salve Regina University), and Newport discussing the subtleties of situational ethics, and referencing the work of such grand thinkers as Dostoyevsky and Kant. Then an actual plot development occurs ? in a diner they overhear a conversation in which a woman talking with friends about her bitter custody battle. The judge presiding over the case is on her ex-husband?s side, and he?s drawing out the trial in order to bleed the woman dry. ?I hope the judge gets cancer,? she exclaims, but Abe, stricken by what he hears, starts to hatch a plan in his head.

Abe, believing that he has finally found a meaningful act that will snap him out of his despair, schemes to murder the judge. He figures that his lack of motive and connection to the involved parties will make this the perfect crime, and that the world will be a better place without the corrupt judge. This decision changes Abe?s outlook on life radically, and the scenes in which he plots his victim?s demise are the most compelling in the movie ? aided in no small part by the well utilized lively piano jazz of the Ramsey Lewis Trio on the soundtrack.

Abe secures cyanide to do the deed by stealing Rita?s key to the college?s chem lab, and stalks the judge so that he can learn his routine. Early on a Saturday morning, Abe is able to successfully poison the judge?s orange juice while he?s taking a break from running to read the paper on a park bench.

Initially, it looks like Abe has indeed committed the perfect murder as the judge?s death is considered to be by heart attack, but days later an autopsy detects the cyanide. Both Jill and Rita begin to suspect Abe, especially after certain clues start piling up that point to his guilt. Jill confronts Abe and he confesses the crime to her, but sticks to his stance that the murder was morally justified. Then its announced that the police have a suspect and Abe has to deal with the fact that an innocent man may take the fall.

As similar situations have happened in Allen?s work before ? most notably in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and MATCH POINT ? it can appear that the 79-year old writer/director is obsessed with whether murder can be gotten away with or if we live in a moral universe where that?s impossible. Problem is that he?s handled these themes much better before (especially in CRIMES which it appears he's remade several times now) and in this effort it feels a lot like he?s yet again treading water.

Underneath all the talky philosophizing, there's no interesting ideas that are being expressed in Allen's screenplay. It's pretty by-the-numbers stuff narratively, and its ending is an unsatisfyingly rushed wrap-up. The love story angle, whether it's between Phoenix and Stone or Phoenix and Posey, is fairly unaffecting as well.

But it does feature some fine, appealing acting - Phoenix?s lived-in performance as Abe, a guy who's into Russian novelists and Russian roulette, beautifully conveys a kind of meticulous messiness, Stone makes an energetic effort in embodying Jill, and Posey makes the most out of a underwritten role. On another plus side, returning cinematographer Darius Khondji, who shot Allen's TO ROME WITH LOVE, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT gives the film a great, lush look (the town of Newport, Rhode Island never looked better), but there?s just not any there there.

Allen?s 46th film as filmmaker is sadly another weak late period effort. It?s time for me to throw the ?every other one is good? theory out the window, because there?s not a rationale I can think of that makes IRRATIONAL MAN into worthwhile Woody Allen.

More later...