Inherent Vice - 1/13/15

I make a big deal out of things on a regular basis when it comes to movies. I took everyone I knew to see Interstellar in Imax 70mm because I knew it would be the last time I could do a thing like that. I regularly subject my friends to artsy movies because I know how important they can be to understanding the parts of life we'll never get to experience as people. I make big deals out of all sorts of movies, but above all, I revere Paul Thomas Anderson's work. I have found so much to love in each and every single one of his movies from Hard Eight to The Master. I have forced so many of those that are close to me to experience his films because I feel they are so important, and that he's doing what no one else does with movies these days. I hyped up his latest film, Inherent Vice, so much to so many people, that when I come out and say what I have to say, I don't want anyone to take it lightly. At all.

Inherent Vice is a bad movie.

Inherent Vice tells the story of Doc Sporello, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a private investigator who works out of the sunny beaches of California in the late 70s who is dragged into a kidnapping mystery by his ex-girlfriend Shasta. Throughout the 2 hour plus runtime we run into a hardass cop who has his own agenda on the case, a drug ring that launders dangerous amounts of cocaine into Los Angelos, a series of confusing flashbacks into Doc Sporello's past relations with Shasta, several encounters with an undercover agent, the undercover agent's wife who only shows up for like 3 minutes, some weird girl who never really identifies herself but sometimes narrates the story, some pothead friend of Doc's who ends up helping him during his investigation, his secretary who is played by a moderately famous actress but only gets like three lines, Reese Witherspoon who doesn't really seem that important but shows up for a while and just causes trouble for Doc, some guy who works for a Black Pantherish group who was in prison with some aryan brotherhood guy, some asian girl who works at a massage joint, a weird dentist who likes cocaine, some girl who visits that dentist parallel to Doc who also likes drugs, her dad, that guy who gets kidnapped, the FBI, a weird collection of erotic ties, the kidnapped guy's wife and her lover, a hitman, some skinheads, and a bunch of other stuff. Notice how I didn't really describe how any of these guys fit together? Keep with me for a moment.

All this stuff happens, all these characters get introduced and tossed aside over the course of 148 minutes, and yet, sitting here, I couldn't think of an easy way to summarize Inherent Vice in a neat paragraph.

I'm sure if you'd read the novel, you could piece everything together and match A1 to A2 and get a story out of it, but as a guy without that knowledge, I couldn't help but feel hopefully lost. From the moment Doc's ex girlfriend shows up, the movie sort of becomes a mess. Characters get tossed into the mess, and then quickly get tossed aside and forgotten as the movie lumbers along. So much so, that on the car ride back from the theater, my group and I tried to pull out a coherent story from the mess we saw on screen. My one friend chimed in and said the movie ought to be called "Incoherent Vice."I couldn't have agreed more.

Even the soundtrack and the cinematography seemed rather....pedestrian. There were a few times where I wowed at the scene in front of me, but a few times in a 2+ hour movie is rather pitiful considering that I believe Robert Elswit to be one of the best cinematographers in the business these days. I can't even tell you if the soundtrack was any good, because I just can't remember it at all. None of the songs have stuck with me, and that's never a good thing. Often times the score is the foundation of the scene for me, and without a foundation, the mess just became far messier.

There isn't much to pull out of Inherent Vice, except that the whole ordeal feels as if the movie is a massive headspin drug trip from start to finish. I enjoyed Joaquin Phoenix's performance, if only because he was the only guy who was in every scene. His performance was the glue that held this mess together - its as if the movie is a bin of dismantled lego kits, a bunch of pieces of different colors and shapes and sizes, none of which fit together without some extreme force, and Joaquin is the the bin in which the legoes are kept. Sure, they don't fall all over the place, but they all sit in the bin, disconnected and unorganized, and generally useless.

Double Feature - The Imitation Game & Foxcatcher 1/4/15

First off, happy new year everyone! Here's to ingesting an even larger amount of movies this year!

So, because I went off on my own to see two movies today, and because I can tell you right now that I absolutely do not have the attention span to write two whole separate reviews for each, so I'm going to do a condensed review of each, and do them both in two paragraphs. This should be quite the adventure!

The Imitation Game:
The Imitation Game is a movie about a dude who is really solid at math, and likes to solve puzzles. Conveniently, he was alive during the time of the second World War, where there was a ton of puzzling to do, so the British military hired him to do mathy puzzles with a bunch of other dudes. Somehow, even though he's socially inept and kind of crazy, he gets put in charge of doing said puzzles, and brings on Keira Knightly to help do puzzles as well. Parallel to this, the dude struggles with his homosexuality, and espionage, while also trying to end World War 2.

The main role was brilliantly acted out by British heartthrob Benedict Cucumberbundlebingbong, with strong supporting roles played out adequately by a bunch of British guys, and the one major female part played by Keira Knightly was fantastic too, but she's generally always really good. The movie was shot well, with what I can assume is a camera, and the score was incredibly moving and rather memorable. Overall, this was a fantastic movie about a rather fascinating story. You should go see this movie if you want to.

Foxcatcher:
Foxcatcher is a movie where the title is a metaphor for the main portion of the story. You see, I had no idea that there was a competitive sport in which people compelled their horses to catch up with a fox, now I do. It applies to this movie, in that Steve Carell is trying to motivate Channing Tatum to do the same, only with wrestling. He's trying to build an empire of world class American wrestlers in order to fulfill a personal conquest, and he tries to rope Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo into his fantasy as well.

There's a lot to this movie, with a number of complex motives and character interactions that are nearly impossible to summarize in a two paragraph review. I'm starting to think this format was kind of a bad idea, as I reeeeeeaaaaallllly like to write in depth about movies. I guess all you need to know about this one is that there's tons of competitive wrestling, and great acting, and its kind of slow paced, yet in the end entirely satisfying, if not a bid sad. Go see this movie, if not for the love of this kind of story, but so you can say you saw it before Steve Carell gets nominated for an Academy Award.

Next time I see a movie, I promise it will be more than two paragraphs. This was an awful experiment.