Inherent Vice review

It's only after the smoke clears and the euphoria wears off that we can look around at it all and ask "What just happened?" Cinema, pure and not-so-simple. That, my friend, is what has just happened. With Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson has deconstructed the gumshoe detective film genre and created one of the best novel adaptations of the past ten years. When I first saw the trailer for the movie, it looked quite a lot like a return to the hyper-energetic fast moving Anderson of the 90's. The man behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia. That couldn't be further from the truth. Inherent Vice is Anderson at his most constrained and wistful. He completely abandons elaborate and exuberant camera moves for slow dollying in on characters and very relaxed tracking shots, perfectly fitting the film's tone. This is the kind of movie I'd imagine an elderly man sitting on his front stoop in a rocking chair telling as he watches his fragile life slip from his fingers. It plays as a fondly looked back upon memory, with a hint of regret. It is very fitting Neil Young's song "Journey Through the Past" accompanies the soundtrack. The film takes place on the verge of change. An era of hippies and long-haired relaxation specialists being pushed to the fringes of society. The violent advent of Charles Manson certainly hasn't helped anything. Larry "Doc" Sportello (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is a good-natured P.I. holding on to the past with the help of plenty of marijuana and late night pizza. He's just a guy who wants to stay cool and do the right thing. Like a bowling ball dropped through a window, Doc is plunged headfirst into a complicated case involving a supposed dead saxophone player, a mysterious organization that might be a boat called the Golden Fang, and many other loose strands that require a very clear head to keep in place. The plot isn't as hard to follow as some may have said, but it doesn't matter. The convoluted case isn't what's important in this movie. Like it's spiritual predecessor The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice is a movie about characters, tone, and setting. The many complications of the plot are also due to Anderson lampooning the noir genre, which is notorious for its numerous complicated plot strands. Just look at some famous examples like The Maltese Falcon or North By Northwest. They are all over the place, and that is part of their genius! Anderson understands this perfectly, and uses all of it to his advantage. The novel Inherent Vice is a personal favorite of mine and its writer, the famed Thomas Pynchon, is also a writer I admire very much. PT Anderson is also a fan of Pynchon. His film here is not just hero worship. He is taking his knowledge and love of film and applying it to his love of the work of Thomas Pynchon to create a perfect Pynchonion vibe filtered through the pot haze of early 1970's California. It's nothing short of beautiful. One thing Anderson added in that was not in the novel is voice over narration from one of the secondary characters, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom). In adding this, Anderson was able to capture Pynchon's wonderful use of language and apply his own personal literary touch. All of it works to near perfection. This was shot on 35mm, and it looks stunning on the big screen. There has been a shift toward shooting on digital recently, and this film is proof that film is a medium that still has its place. The whole thing looks gorgeous, mainly because of the celluloid it was shot on. It certainly helped that Robert Elswit, a long-time cinematographer for Anderson, was working here. He is one of the best (the best?) cinematographer working in Hollywood today and deserves some recognition for his work here. Holding it all together are the wonderful ensemble of actors working here. Joaquin Phoenix, channeling his inner Dude, does some great work (as expected) here. He truly embodies his character and never hits a wrong note. Josh Brolin plays a macho cop and opposite side to Phoenix's detective. Brolin has always been good. But this here may be his best work. He is funny, yet subtle, and delivers some of the movie's best lines. Joanna Newsom is great, Katherine Waterson is great, Benicio del Toro is great, Reese Witherspoon is great. Really, everyone is great. Overall, it's a masterpiece. A pot-fueled, funny, wistful, journey through post-60's California. While it might not be There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice is more or less the best new film I've seen in 2014.

#tbt Grindhouse review

Happy Throwback Thursday guys! Even though it's not Thursday.

 Sorry about that. Quentin Tarantino, weird as he can be, is one of my favorite directors. Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs... The list goes on. I pretty much love all of his movies. Back in 2007, Robert Rodriguez (a fellow director and Quentin's bud) and Tarantino himself decided to team up and make a double feature in the homage to those old poorly made exploitation pictures they all loved when they were a kid. The product was Grindhouse. Although I'm not old enough to have seen said exploitation flicks back in the 60's and 70's, I am old enough to enjoy the nice mixture of sheer insanity and genius that is Grindhouse. There are two full movies in the Grindhouse package. The first, Planet Terror, is a grossly over-the-top zombie film directed and written by Robert Rodriguez. It stars such big name actors as Josh Brolin and Bruce Willis, even Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas shows up for a short cameo (but I'm not sure how necessary that was). The plot of Planet Terror is that a scientist (Naveen Andrews, or as you may know him, Sayid from Lost) "accidentally" unleashes a gas turning people into bloodthirsty lunatics. So a loner, an ex-go go dancer, a bartender, and Josh Brolin's character's wife try and stay alive and find out what's happening. Next is Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, but in between the two is packed with a few fake trailers and commercials that are actually great. First is Machete, directed by Robert Rodriguez, which is less of a fake trailer because that actually turned into a real movie with the same plot line as the trailer promised. Then there's Werewolf Women of the SS. Which is as stupid and ridiculous as it sounds. But it does have a funny cameo from Nicholas Cage. Rob Zombie directed that one. After that was Don't, directed by the great Edgar Wright. That one was about some haunted house, but it was done in such a way I was cracking up throughout the entire trailer. Lastly was Eli Roth's slasher-parody, Thanksgiving. That one was almost as funny (and bloody) as the rest of the trailers. Honestly, even if you hated the two films in Grindhouse (which I did not) the trailers make the whole thing worthwhile. Finally, there is Death Proof. The plot of Death Proof is there's two groups of girls who are being stalked by psychopathic murderer, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russel) who kills with his 'death proof'car. After the sickeningly bloody Planet Terror, Death Proof was a nice break. It was violent, but it was much more dialogue-centric (as are most of Tarantino's movies). I enjoyed Death Proof a lot. It had some fun dialogue and characters, and it was more enjoyable in a sense than Planet Terror was. I didn't hate Planet Terror though. It had some strangely fun moments. Like for example, Rose McGowan's character has a machine gun for a leg that she uses to kill zombies. This is ridiculous, but it works for this movie. Rodriguez added in a lot more of the 'grindhouse' feel' to his film than Tarantino did. While Planet Terror constantly had the dirty cheap exploitation feeling to it, Death Proof used it a lot less. In Planet Terror Robert Rodriguez added in a "missing reel" to add to the feel. Tarantino did that too. Yet in Planet Terror, the reel was used to tie up loose ends and make the story easier for Rodriguez. While in Death Proof, the missing reel was added only for the feel, not as a plot device. It's obvious that Quentin Tarantino is more talented than Robert Rodriguez. Never the less, I still really enjoy most of Rodriguez's stuff. I liked Planet Terror, but Death Proof was just a bit better. Either way, the entire Grindhouse feature is a terrifically fun time that I would certainly watch again. So yeah, I recommend it! Happy Viewing guys. Remember you can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies!