“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.

Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we Image via Yahoo

There is a very specific type of story, which entails somebody trading civilization for some time in the woods, that has become something of its own sub-genre. And with that comes the burden of tropes and cliches. There is the flashback structure, the stubbornness, and the regret. I’m referring specifically to Into the Wild and 127 Hours. Wild also finds itself in this category, but it deviates when it comes to its main character, who seems at least a bit more willing to bend to the way of nature.

Like the aforementioned films, Wild is based on a true story. In 1994, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) left Minneapolis to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. It is a bit of an odd trail that never goes right along the coast but rather through scorching deserts and rigorous mountain passes. It is beautiful, yet unforgiving. By the way, I have not hiked this trail at all. The closest I have gotten to it was a hummer ride through Joshua Tree National Park. Wild just happens to portray it so well that you feel like you are there. Another good name for this film could be America You’re Beautiful, But You’re Bringing Me Down.

Witherspoon’s gives a warts-and-all performance; the film does open with Cheryl ripping her toe nail right off her big toe. I don’t think it’s fair necessarily to call Witherspoon’s performance “brave” as many have because at the end of each shoot day, she probably had a nice hotel room to sleep in. Yet, you can read about her extreme commitment to the role and see for yourself that her passion for this woman’s story paid off. The deep pain and soul searching feel so real that at times, that it doesn’t even feel like she is acting at all.

Unlike other characters (slash real life humans) who venture out into the wild, from Chris McCandless to Aaron Ralston, Cheryl isn’t giving the finger to the man. Instead, she is both escaping and confronting deep emotional pain following the death of her mother (Laura Dern). Cheryl’s journey is more a search for meaning than an all out rebellion. It’s equal parts Siddhartha and Easy Rider. It’s a spiritual film of sorts, the kind where flashbacks and hallucinations seamlessly blend together.

Wild was directed by Jean Marc-Vallee, who had a breakout hit with Dallas Buyers Club last year. Vallee has an amazing ability to get the best possible performances out of his actors. He gets them to reach bottom, and then strip away all their flaws in the most personal and revealing way possible. Luckily, he has gotten rid of that irritating shaky cam but unfortunately, he has not lost his love of blatant visual metaphors. After enough people tell her how heavy her bag is, you just want to scream, “we get it, she’s carrying a lot of baggage around with her!” Call the neurologist, because he really hit us over the head with that one. Heyo!

The one other issue I had with Wild was actually with the flashback structure. The film doesn’t have the confidence to just transition without Cheryl looking at a random item, squinting, and then remembering what pain it causes her. It’s essentially the Pear Effect from Saving Mr. Banks. Road trip films are loose in nature, so attempting to be this stringent just seems self-defeating.

Having said that, Wild is a film worth seeing. It puts a nice little twist on a somewhat tired concept and it also happens to be carried on the shoulders of one of the best performances of the year. It’s the kind of film that might make you approach things just a little differently. I don’t think I’m going to go on a backpacking trip through California anytime soon, but I will definitely step outside and see if I can befriend a fox.

Brain Farts From The Edge

• I like the dramatic reliefs in the story. There are many moments when it seems like something really terrible will happen but to our relief, it does not. Cheryl might not have brought the right type of stove, but at least she is always looking over her shoulder.
• REI. Snapple. Lays. More Snapple. Oh, the product placement!
• I really want to rewatch Into the Wild right about now.
• I know there is the whole arguments that you can watch most indies on your laptop and it doesn’t make a difference. However, the stunning vistas of California and Oregon make this worth seeing on the big screen.
• Taxidermy is always associated with creeps. I just associate it with this guy.
• Wild has one of my favorite soundtracks of the year. Leonard Cohen? Simon & Garfunkel? Hippies from Oregon covering the Grateful Dead? Sold.
• Speaking of the Dead, another great name for Wild would have been Wild: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been. Also…127.5 Hours.
• Seeing Reese Witherspoon walk through the halls of a high school and I’m getting Tracy Flick flashbacks.
• Only implausible part: A man who writes for a publication about homeless people earns enough money off of it to pay for rent and gas. The 90s were a strange time, man.
• Hollywood’s overall lesson based on Into the Wild, Wild, and 127 Hours: The path to enlightenment lies in strangers who will give you potato chips and whiskey along the way.