Inherent Vice (5/5 Stars)

I have waited too long to review this movie. As I sit down to write I am reviewing in my mind what happened where when and how and this is a huge mistake because I hardly had a grasp on that when I was watching the movie in the theater. But dig this: during the movie I did not care because like the best of Chandler-esque pot detectives (see The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski) this movie makes its money moment to moment not in the grand scheme of things and boy is this movie filled from top to bottom with moments. It’s stacked with jokes like the flattop of Flintstone proportions that neatly sits on Lietuenant Detective (and SAG member) Christian F. “BigFoot” Bjornsen’s fat head.

Inherent Vice was adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is like a bonus movie from this guy in that his last two movies each took five years to make and market. Not only is this one coming to us within two years of his last (‘The Master’) but it is also a comedy and certainly the funniest P.T. Anderson movie to date. There has been an extraordinary amount of effort made here to include at least one visual gag in every scene. Some are very good like say the “welcome” “Doc” gets to the LA police department, Bigfoot’s son pouring him a drink, and the parking technique of his assistant. Roger Ebert once said of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean 11’ that it felt like a virtuoso classical pianist went down to the local honkytonk and started riffing on some ragtime melodies for fun. That’s what this feels like too. P.T. Anderson is slumming it with the low culture comedians. That’s probably why this movie will not be recognized for anything even though it should be on par with all his other high class movies.

Now for your reading enjoyment I will attempt to summarize the plot. May the gods of Imdb guide me! This movie is about Larry “Doc” Sportello a hippie private detective in the early 1970s of Los Angeles. I am assuming he got the nickname ‘Doc’ because he works out of a doctor’s office. One night Doc’s ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) shows up needing his help. Her boyfriend, the married real estate devloper Mickey Wolfman, may be the target of a kidnapping plot by his wife and her boyfriend. Doc can’t turn this request down as that girl has a hold of him the way that certain women often do. Thus the convoluted journey begins where a murder at a whorehouse brings him in contact with Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (a perfect Josh Brolin), which necessitates the appearance of Doc’s maritime lawyer Sauncho Smilax, Esq. (Benicio Del Toro) and his current girlfriend Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon). The FBI gets in on the case and something called the Golden Fang, which might be a boat or something bigger leads the increasingly convoluted storyline through other bright character spots such as Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd D.D.S (a manic Martin Short) and Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson). The conversation that Doc has with Coy is perhaps the low point of clarity in the movie since it takes place after at least an hour of hard to follow and might consist of codespeak. I don’t know I’m not sure because I probably would not know what they were talking about even if it wasn’t in code.

The confusing aspect of Inherent Vice is medicated quite a bit like the confusing way of The Big Lebowski is medicated: that is with lots of drugs and enough great stuff going on in the moment that the viewer does not necessarily need to have a big picture in order to enjoy himself. Perhaps the best self-contained ten minutes of the movie is the introduction and dispensation of Martin Short, a dentist who may or may not be one small cog in a vast conspiracy to get hippies on heroin and then sell them everything they need to get off of heroin (heroin apparently does awful things to your teeth). ANYWAY it is a manic creation of unbridled lust and hard drugs before we are informed in the subsequent scene that the dentist has broken in his neck in a trampoline accident. Of course it may not be an accident but we’ve already moved on.

I haven’t read the book but I get the feeling that it is an irretrievably unadaptable source and the fact that P.T. Anderson has made a good movie from it makes the adaptation itself extraordinary. He should at least get an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. The movie is filled to the brim with memorable characters but Josh Brolin’s performance is one flattop head above the rest. He too should get an Oscar nomination. Joaquin Phoenix does a wonderful job of holding his own among the nutcases. Oh and I forgot that the movie is narrated by a character that is kind of tangential to the whole thing. Someone explained to me that she knows everything via stoner ESP or whatever. It works just as well.

I liked this movie quite a bit and will probably have to see it again to get most of the jokes. I hope you see it at least once and don’t feel bad if you can’t entirely figure what is going on. I suspect nobody can, especially the hippies.

Wild (4/5 Stars)

Best-selling memoirs based on a solitary exploration of one’s self can be apt for cynical ridicule. Take the example of whoever wrote “Eat Pray Love.” Once I heard that she was paid upfront to write a book about going on an exotic vacation to become enlightment I sort of lost all interest. I mean how can someone plan enlightenment and what kind of enlightment could it possibly be it was already in he works to sell the experience. I can give Thoreou a pass for ‘Walden’ because of its novelty; there was no expectation that it would make money. I can also give a pass to Christopher McCandless from ‘Into the Wild’ because somebody else wrote that story about him. He was not about to share it with the world. Finally I am going to give a pass to Cheryl Strayed whose bestselling book ‘Wild’ was the basis for this movie. The main reason is that even though this is a chronicling of her hike on the 1,000-mile Pacific Crest Trail, the heart of the story is not really about her. It is about the untimely death of her mother, which precipitated in Cheryl a self-destructive cycle of heroin addiction. Her hike and the book she wrote about it was an attempt to for lack of better words, get over it.

This movie was directed by Jean-Marc Vallee and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby in a surprisingly cinematic way given that Hornby is a novelist (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and not a screenwriter. What is not surprising is that the movie’s writing has a preternatural sense of rhythm to it, one of Hornby’s distinctive strengths. Many lines of story are blended together with the main voyage of the Pacific Crest Hike with flashbacks and past dialogue and music coming in and out in a seemingly unorganized (but actually very probably meticulously organized) way. It feels like you are on a hike. You know, you are walking alone along a path in the wilderness. Everything is quiet but your thoughts and they meander in and out from present thinking, past memories, and the music you are playing in your head. I think Nick Hornby has done a very wonderful job of adapting a story that could easily be stilted and confining into something that feels like a seamless meditation of past, present, and a little of the future. If the book is anything like the movie in terms of structure, I would be very interested in reading it.

Anchoring the movie is Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed. This is one of those roles that basically guarantee an Oscar Nomination if it is done competently. Reese pulls off a competent performance and probably will be nominated. She does two things particularly well. One seems less about acting but deserves some recognition anyway and that is hiking around a movie set in the wilderness with a 50lb backpack. Reese happens to be 5’1” and movie star thin so there is that. The second has to do with being 38 years old and playing a young twenty-something character. This has less to do with having wrinkles than it is about inhabiting a person who is not mature the way that Reese Witherspoon obviously is in real life (a producer of this film actually) and more importantly in the movie roles she generally gets. This is most readily apparent in scenes opposite Cheryl’s mother (wonderfully inhabited by Laura Dern). The mother obviously adored and glowingly remembered by the child, is a bittersweet portrait. After escaping an abusive marriage, she started over with two kids, supported herself, went back to school (at the same high school as Cheryl) and somehow had a good attitude about it all. Then at age 41 she developed cancer. The doctor told her she had a year to live. She died within a month. And Cheryl absolutely grieved off the deep end of her life. This aspect of the story is what allows it to sidestep the memoir trap I mentioned above. Cheryl Strayed was not motivated to experience the journey as a quest of self-fulfillment but as a way to try to recapture the strength of those she had around her and lost. The story is not so much about her as a strong person as it is about the people in her life she drew strength from. And that lack of self-aggrandizement is what makes the commercialization of the story okay.

There is one other aspect of this movie that needs mentioning and it is in direct contrast to the most obviously comparable movie, Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild.” That too was about a person going into the wild alone, meeting new people, and pushing physical limits. One of the main differences though is that “Into the Wild” was about a young man whereas “Wild” is about a young woman. Without seeing this movie I would not have expected the most noticeable discrepancy is the overwhelming fear of sexual assault in the latter. Meeting new people for Christopher McCandless is a genrally pleasant experience. He gets drunk with Vince Vaughn. He talks philosophy with wanderers. He crashes a barbeque of a couple in the Grand Canyon. These same sorts of encounters happen in “Wild” but first Cheryl has to figure out if the person she is meeting is potentially dangerous. This is constant for every meeting. It really distracts away from watching the scenery. I wish it would just be paranoia on the side of Cheryl and almost all of the guys she meets in the movie (and it is mostly all guys on this trail) are totally cool. But then she does meet this one asshole and it turns out that it is a good idea for Cheryl to be cautious all the time. Come on people, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Mud (3/5 Stars)

‘Mud’ is the third feature of one of the more exciting new American directors, Jeff Nichols. Nichols first came upon the scene in 2008 with “Shotgun Stories,” one of the more impressive no-budget films I have ever seen. He progressed in leaps and bounds with his second feature, “Take Shelter,” which I still consider the best movie of 2011. That movie added to Nichols repertoire the kind of special effects only achievable with a decent budget. With “Mud,” Nichols adds the presence of movie stars, something a small movie can generally only achieve when the makers have a reputation for quality work.

Two kids, Ellis and Nick, take a motorboat out to an island in the Arkansas part of the Mississippi river.  They are adventuring to check out a boat that somehow found itself in a tree. They find the boat but they also find a man named “Mud” (this is not a made up name apparently as all the other characters in the story call him that too) who is hiding out there away from the authorities. Mud (played by Matthew McConaughey asks for help and weaves a story about killing a man out of love for his woman Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, whose parents are talking of divorce in the background of home scenes, decides to help Mud. Because as he explains at one points these two love each other. The kid does not do a whole lot of explaining his actions, which is accurate as he is just a kid after all and probably wouldn’t be able to articulate what he wanted to say even if he wanted too. The other adults in the story however take notice of his odd behavior and sneaking about and provide many opportunities for advice. The advice varies of course but most of it is about love and it is as helpful as basically anything you can tell a fourteen year old in vague, uncertain, and metaphorical terms (the funniest advice comes from Michael Shannon character, uncle to Nick. He uses a ceiling fan he dredged up from the Mississippi river to make his point). Some things, kids just need to figure out for themselves.

It is a good question as to what Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) actually learns from the experiences he has in this movie other than women are unpredictable and it (maybe?) is not a good idea to fight with other guys over them.  I am going to keep from talking too much about the storyline here because there isn’t much more to the movie than the limited twists to the plot. I could talk a bit about the performances but I couldn’t really propound on the specialness of them that much. My best observation I think would be how Tye Sheridan must have a helluva right hand because he keeps landing punches in the faces of guys twice his size. It looks a little awkward because he has to reach up so high. I wouldn’t think the jabs would have much impact but they keep on doing so. I suppose I could also mention that the Mississippi river looks pretty neat.

You what this movie reminds me of? Those classic Criterion Collection European films. Ones like “The 400 Blows” and “Au Revoir Enfants.” These are movies that my book “The 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die” keeps telling me to see, but for the life of me I cannot understand what makes these movies great. I understand why they aren’t bad, but why would they be great? They accomplish perfectly what they set out to accomplish but in the end it is exactly what it is, not much.  

It is a sort of critical paradox that the more a movie tries to do, the more ways it can fail. I think that may be the reason why ‘Mud’ which does is a very good not so ambitious movie can score around 98% on Rotten Tomatoes while Michael Bay’s ‘Pain and Gain’ and probably Baz Luhrman’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (I say probably because I have yet to see it, will so this weekend) are hovering around 50% even though they are very dense movies that aiming to accomplish quite a lot.

Walk the Line 11/26/05

Fresh. This movie will no doubt draw comparison's to last year's "Ray." In structure it is almost the same movie. What with different characters, different music, and a different story line. But it really is quite similar. Now one may ask, since they are essentially the same film, which is better. I would give my money to "Walk the Line." "Ray" also being a good film relied heavily on the star performance by Jamie Fox. The entire movie revolved around him. In "Walk the Line" we have much more of an ensemble. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, playing Johnny Cash and June Carter, along with other colorful personalities like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis are found along the way. The songs played are more intact and complete than those in "Ray." And the climax is better suited with the onscreen marraige proposal of Johnny to June. 
I will also say this. I was much impressed by the performance of Reese Witherspoon. I now know where the hoopla comes from. She fills her character with the knowledge and truth of June Carter's dual personalities: Her comic stage persona and her serious offstage personality. At times I forgot it was the blonde Reese and believed it was brunette June. Consider me her newest fan. (Props to Joaquin also, which goes without saying and I don't believe I have to indulge too much on what everyone already knows.) (The music's great also)