Inherent Vice

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Inherent Vice is a stoner crime mystery based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon. It stars Joaquin “Leaf” Phoenix as Doc, a type of hippie physician PI involved in a caper to locate a missing real estate tycoon who was involved with Doc’s ex-girlfriend.

Nick: When I saw Inherent Vice the audience was so rambunctious it was hard to pay attention to anything. The funny thing with that is I feel this film wants to be confusing anyway. Told from a stoner’s perspective that keeps getting more complicated for him to be able to focus in on the first detail, let alone the four more he’s discovered within the past 48 hours.

Dustin: The audience I saw it with also lost it every time Doc smoked or snorted drugs. I felt lost from the first scene. I was able to get the gist of the movie, but didn’t fully understand it. I believe that was an artistic decision as well. It was like walking into the middle of an interesting conversation and always feeling somewhat behind.

I will say I enjoyed the movie enough that I would watch it again or read the book to really understand it. I have a feeling this movie has a lot more to discover the more you see it that will make it more enjoyable. I think I’d give it a higher rating after subsequent viewings, but I usually go with my first instinct when giving star ratings.

Nick: I stated the exact same thing to my friend after the film. The book would probably tie all these lovely parts that I caught together better than subsequent viewings of the film. Although I also want to see it again. The film never stopped making me laugh. Whether it was with subtle humor or over-the-top gags that were pulled off by great actors. Joaquin is one hell of a fantastic actor!

Dustin: Like a David O’Russell film, this is a movie where the performances carry it as the actors have fun with their roles. I especially loved Martin Short as the creepy, druggie dentist and Josh Brolin as the stone-faced narc. “Motto panucake-u!”

Nick: If a movie has David O. Russell or Paul Thomas Anderson’s name attached to it I would see it without ever questioning what the film is about. I tried to not watch the trailer for Inherent Vice because I was so stoked for, it but with all the movies I see it’s an almost impossible occurrence.

Did you think Joanna Newsom’s character was a figment of Doc’s imagination? She is the woman who is always giving him some shade of wisdom and only ever talks to Doc.

Dustin: She was the narrator also, right? That’s an interesting angle. I didn’t think of it, but now that you mention it, she is kind of a character that only exists around the protagonist, like Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense (spoiler alert!)

Nick: Yep, and she also exists to just spout out wisdom to Doc to try to reel him back in from his druggy haze. The film was constantly fun to the extent that no matter how much the audience tried to piss me off I was always in a curious and joyous mood. But the one part that was no fun at all was the sex scene between Doc and his former lover… Did you find the spanking disturbing? I did.

Dustin: Yes, it made me uncomfortable too. It kind of changed my opinion of Doc from a lovable stoner to kind of a creep. I was still engaged, but I thought of him differently.

Nick: I wouldn’t go as far as calling him a creep. She was naked and teasing him, but the aggressive way he acted once he was bent to her will was very disturbing. It could probably be explained from the pent up rage he has for her since she left him without so much as a word. Though that scene was so awesome. Did you notice it was one take? From the moment she appeared naked to the end of the sex scene. I wonder how many times they had to shoot the scene and what they were going for. Do you think they picked the one that was the most uncomfortable?

Dustin: What made it extra uncomfortable is a group of high school delinquents wandered into the theater right at that moment and burst out laughing. I felt like a dirty old man. And that’s not just because I was sitting in the back aisle wearing a trench coat.

Nick: Nothing but a trench coat?

Dustin: Pretty much.

Nick: The scene early on when Doc walks into the brothel and the names of the sex acts and how much each of them cost still has me laughing now. I found it that funny.

I would also like to point out how I so called Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern being nominated for Oscars in our last blog entry for Wild. On how I knew, but didn’t understand why Reese would get one and how I wanted but didn’t know if Laura would be nominated. The Oscars these days, to me, don’t mean too much anyway.

Wild

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as a “wild” young woman, Cheryl Strayed, who is hiking some cross-country trail in order to deal with her inner demons. Along the way she encounters other hikers, colorful back-woods types, and a CGI fox for some reason.

Nick: A fox that is obviously CGI at that!

Wild is flawless, from my perspective, in a technical aspect. Editing would jump between images from different times in Cheryl’s life while throwing dream-like sequences in for good measure, which helped to bring some much needed sympathy for our lost main character. The cinematography was gorgeous and the score was unheard (which is how it should be).

Dustin: I thought it was very well done from a storytelling aspect, and the technical elements complemented that. There is the linear story of Cheryl hiking the trail, with flashbacks from various points in her life accounting for half the story. The flashbacks were integrated seamlessly into the story.

Did you ever get the feeling, though, that some of her background was exaggerated for cinematic effect?

Nick: Could you elaborate? Just because there are a lot of dream-like sequences strewn throughout.

Dustin: Mainly the stuff with the drugs and sleeping around, all the rock-bottom stuff. Cheryl has a very good vocabulary, and I’d say difficulty hiking a cross-country trail be filed under “white people problems,” and that just doesn’t quite match up for me to her background as a drug addict. I imagine it was somewhat true, but perhaps exaggerated for the story.

Nick: So you think the problems she faced in the desert “wild” is somewhat fiction while the problems in the city “wild” are real?

Dustin: No, the other way around. I think she may have experimented with drugs and cheated on her husband as depicted in the movie, but I wonder if it was as full-blown rock-bottom, or if that was heightened to make a more interesting film.

Nick: I completely agree with that. Whether it’s true doesn’t really matter, but because it feels so forced to the audience it kind of starts to wear thin. The degree of heroin usage does not comply, to me, when grieving over the loss of a mother. I wish we got images of her downfall. It seems that we saw her as her mother was dying and then one year later now a junkie and strumpet.  

Dustin: Perhaps it would have been wiser to suggest that stuff rather than show it. I know a storyteller should “show” rather than “tell,” but when they showed it my BS detector was kind of going off. But, like you said, for the purposes of the narrative, it’s fine. I just would take it with a grain of salt if this were sold as a 100 percent true story.

Nick: Well according to this week’s Entertainment Weekly, Wild is the most accurate biography of the many films currently in theaters. It says the one thing that is false was when Cheryl was driven to the desert by another female hiker when it was actually a man who did this. The reasoning for the switch was because the woman was a cameo of the real Cheryl Strayed. But I was curious if her book, which I have not read, is somewhat exaggerated. I only say that for how ridiculous some of it seems when given in the film.

Dustin: My mom read the book and met Cheryl Strayed, but I haven’t read it. She said one of her friends tried to read it, but gave up because she thought Cheryl came off as too self-absorbed. I said, “You mean someone who wrote a book about herself comes off as self-absorbed?!” I guess if no one was around other than Cheryl to witness everything, it would be hard to prove otherwise. But I have a hard time believing it is the most accurate biography currently in theaters. Did the writer of that EW article see Taken 3: TAK3N?

"It ends here." One can only hope

Nick: I do not know, but TAK3N was not involved in the article, but Selma was and that movie looks great.

One problem I have when watching films is judging actors. It’s easy at times, but also confusing at other times. I feel that Reese Witherspoon will be nominated for an Oscar, which I don’t care about to be honest, but it seems like she would just be nominated because She Is Reese Witherspoon and she has a fantastic track record. Many people could have performed her role and done just as good of a job. So yes, Reese did a good job. But Laura Dern on the other hand, as Cheryl’s mother, was fantastic and I couldn’t imagine a single other person in that part. She was impeccable. I was truly swayed by her and every single one of her lines brought some level of profoundness that lifted the material to something more memorable.

Dustin: This movie was Oscar bait through-and-through. I imagine it’ll be nominated for every relevant category.

Nick: Total Oscar bait. Was thinking it throughout the whole movie. Funny enough it was a crossword answer the next day! Any film that is a biography released in December or early January is an automatic nomination to the Oscar-bait category. We argued about whether or not Captain Phillips was Oscar bait, which it started off by being in the category, but hey, I also think it was nominated for five or so Oscars! Who called it, Son?!

Wild is always fascinating, sometimes because of the story, but mostly through its superb technical aspects and the director, Jean-Marc Valle, behind them.