“The doctor is busy.” “He didn’t look busy.” “…he’s thinking.” Image via YouTube

After watching Inherent Vice, I asked myself two very different questions:

1) Why would I watch this?

2) Why wouldn’t I watch this?

Sometimes, I found myself asking both questions at the exact same time.

With Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson uses his well-earned creative freedom to go down some very strange paths. But with the overlapping stories, Los Angeles setting, and 1970s fashion, Paul Thomas Anderson has never been more at home than he is in Inherent Vice.

PTA loves collaborating with the same actors again and again, but I think he has finally found his muse in Joaquin Phoenix, who has shown that with this and The Master, he is really good at playing very eccentric dudes. In Inherent Vice, Phoenix plays Doc Sportello, who I guess is a doctor because he seems to go to a doctor’s office everyday for work. During his off hours, he moonlights as a private detective. If you want a good idea of who Doc is, just picture if The Dude was around in the right time and place. Doc is a loud and proud hippie during a time when it was okay to chain smoke joints in front of a police officer. While lounging in his beachside bungalow, Doc’s ex-lady Shasta (Katherine Waterson) pays him a visit. She needs him to help foil a half-baked extortion plot involving her rich new boyfriend. After much explanation and little hesitation, Doc offers his services.

Now, why would Doc stick his neck out for somebody who broke his heart? That is one of the many mysteries that lies within Inherent Vice. This is a film noir in which one of the biggest mysteries concerns what we might possibly do for love. This film is all over the map. Normally, that would be a bad thing. But here, that is precisely what makes it all work.

While Inherent Vice is not Paul Thomas Andeson’s masterpiece, it feels like years of watching his films could better train you and prepare you for this one. This is an ensemble piece where big names drift in and out. Some come back, and others disappear without a trace. For some reason, the narrator (Joanna Newsom), has no real stake in the events at all. She serves sometimes as an audience surrogate, and other times as a spiritual advisor, as if she appears ignorant but knows some deep truth that she refuses to reveal. Many great stories rely on unreliable narrators. This story needs one, because there is not a single reliable character to be found here.

I have not read Inherent Vice, nor anything else by Thomas Pynchon (although I did once tell my professor that I read The Crying of Lot 49), but I can say with utmost confidence that Paul Thomas Anderson is the perfect choice to direct this. Anderson, who is an LA native, treats his home city not as this bright, glamorous place, but rather as a hodgepodge of outlaws and misfits who all want their chance in the spotlight. Think of what would happen if L.A. Confidential, Chinatown, and Muholland Dr. were all thrown into a blender together. This is a version of Los Angeles where everybody eats pizza and nobody drives on any freeways. Here I thought everybody in LA was sipping on kale smoothies while driving down the 101 all the time.

Inherent Vice looks and feels like the kind of film that isn’t made that much anymore. Thanks to the beautiful, grainy film stock, Inherent Vice doesn’t even look like it was made in 2014. It is a film nerd’s paradise, and a period piece that actually looks like a relic of that period. Too many filmmakers try to shoot period pieces in digital and when that happens, they end up with Public Enemies.

This also happens to be the funniest movie that PTA has ever made, and this is the same guy who made one movie with Adam Sandler and another where Joaquin Phoenix farts in front of Philip Seymour Hoffman. In one scene, Doc screams after looking at a picture. The trailer does not do it justice. The way that Doc tries to act like nothing happened is comic genius. Each character, from Doc to Brolin’s scummy LAPD officer (Josh Brolin) are so cartoonish to the point of farce. But then, something will pop up like a scene in which Doc and Shasta run down Sunset Boulevard on a rainy day. It is a beautiful scene, and a reminder that all these characters are just lonely people in a big city who are looking for love.

Honestly, I do not think this review, or one viewing alone, can do this film justice. Characters ask a lot of questions, and then other characters question those questions. Sometimes, it is exhausting. Other times, it is exhilarating. This is the kind of film noir that constantly questions why it is even trying to solve a mystery in the first place. But let’s quickly go back to those questions I posed earlier:

1) Why would you watch this movie? It’s a long, muddled mess. There’s a lot more talking than action and it is really hard to keep track of what is going on. Plus, Katherine Waterson is only naked once.

2) Why wouldn’t you watch this movie? Once is good enough. Also, this film embraces confusion and chaos like few others do dare to. It just goes for it. If True Detective and Serial have taught us anything this year, it is that the clues and the intrigue are often even more fascinating than the end result.

If you want, you can get lost in the forest and have a panic attack. Or, you can wander around and admire the trees. Or better yet, you can chop down all the trees and complain about them on Reddit.

Brain Farts From The Edge:

• I really hope Josh Brolin scores an Oscar nomination for this. I want a Josh Brolin pull string doll that shouts, “molto panacako!” over and over again.
• I spent about six months in Southern California, and never once did I have a frozen banana. Between Inherent Vice and Arrested Development, I guess this is a part of LA culture that I somehow missed. Oh well. FOMO
• Cameo of the year: Martin Short running with his pants down.
• Is it really that easy to just become a detective? I should have started doing this years ago.
• With Inherent Vice and Nightcrawler, 2014 has been a great year for making LA look really cool.
• Rarely is this question asked: why doesn’t Jena Malone get more work?
• There is an amazing moment that happens towards the end of any given Paul Thomas Anderson film. The end credits are about to roll, and you know that it is going to end abruptly. Boom. Cut to black. Immediately, the audience erupts in chatter. Not because they are rude and anxious, but because they are confused and stunned all at once. This is what makes the shared cinematic experience so special.
• Time to see this thing again. And write a better review.

The trailer for Inherent Vice, the latest Paul Thomas Anderson joint, was just released. Let’s see if it meets all of the criteria on the PTA checklist:

• Southern California? Check
• Ambient score? Check
• Insanely detailed period piece details? Check
• Promise of random, brutal violence? Check

Okay, now we’re talking.

But I’m going to try and not get too ahead of myself. After all, I remember The Master. More specifically, I remember the trailer, which promised a taut thriller based on Scientology. What PTA ended up giving us wasn’t bad, but I still feel like I missed something.

My point is that trailers can be misleading so sometimes, it’s nice to view them as works of art separate from the film itself. And holy crap, does the Inherent Vice trailer deliver. It boasts three odd music choices in under three minutes, acting that is already cracking me up, and the promise of a mystery I want to be a part of. I have no idea what Inherent Vice is about, but I have already seen enough to know that I am interested. Seriously, I think it’s time that the Oscars create a category for trailers. Let’s just hope that PTA Anderson still has some movie magic up his sleeve.

Joaquin Phoenix is an underrated national treasure. Is it just me, or did anyone see shades of John Belushi in Phoenix here? Is it too late to cast him in the Belushi biopic?

“We have always been a nation of immigrants who hate the new immigrants.” -Jon Stewart

Between Colonial Williamsburg and 90s nostalgia, humans have a bad habit of white washing history. Between the men dressed in funny outfits and the All That reruns, we often forget the wars and the dysentery.

Because of this, I praise the heavens above when a film like The Immigrant comes out. This is the kind of film that treats history less like an epic poem and more like a rap lyric. In other words, this film is aware that life is a dirty game, and you’ve got to play dirty to win. Now, excuse me while I slap myself in the face for writing those last few sentences.

Set in 1921, The Immigrant touches a nerve for me, as all Jews must grow both sentimental and weary at the sight of Ellis Island. Passage into America meant escape from Cossacks, but it also meant living in squalor while dealing with even more persecution (this went for every ethnic group that came here). The Immigrant tells the story of Ewa Cybulska (Marion Cotillard), a young Catholic woman from Poland who is willing to do anything to survive. Or maybe she doesn’t want to do anything to survive, but she is forced to do so.

Not long after arriving at Ellis Island, Ewa is detained and nearly deported. Luckily, she is saved by  the benevolent, vaguely Jewish, Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix). While Bruno takes care of her and gives her a home, he also forces her into a harsh life of prostitution. Phoenix is on a winning streak lately, and he is so good in this that it is almost hard to describe, but I will try anyway. It looks like he learned a few tricks from Philip Seymour Hoffman while working with him in The Master. Like Hoffman did with Lancaster Dodd, Phoenix paints Bruno as stable on the outside, yet unpredictable within. Every act on kindness seems to be cloaking some sort of shady intentions. Making bad intentions reasonable and good intentions questionable is the crossroads at which the perfect amount of moral ambiguity can be created.

The Immigrant is the kind of film that is rarely made anymore, because it is the kind of film that audiences don’t normally want to see. There is no nice message at the end, and no characters ever really act out of kindness towards one another. It is an endless pit of sadness, yet it is not sadness porn, as some might call it. This is not like 12 Years a Slave that you watch once and never want to see again. There is something both compelling and oddly enjoyable about this film. There is no real comic relief to be found, but the immersion into the culture of 1920s New York is seamless. Besides this, the most enjoyable part of the film is the thrilling plot, which heads in whichever direction it feels like taking.

The Immigrant is a film about the American Dream, but not in the way in which everybody ultimately gets what they want. When you think about The Immigrant, think about The Godfather: Part II and Once Upon a Time in America. That might seem like a bit of a reach, but this is the kind of film that aspires to climb to that high of a level. This is more of a film about what America takes away than what it gives. Even if you are one of the lucky few to get a shot at this great opportunity, that doesn’t mean that your life is all that great. Everyone worked and fought so hard to reach New York, and then once they got there, they all wanted to get away. Nothing better reflects this than the very last shot of the film. I dare not spoil it, but it’s one of the most incredible cinematic illusions I have ever seen. Once you see it, you can’t forget it.