![]() ![]() There's a dread pervading the 1970 SoCal beach culture, too, part of it's the never-ending Vietnam War and the vicious culture war against the youth movement being waged for political purposes by Nixon and his conservative base, and part of it's fear of having your door broken down for smoking pot by Lt. Oedipa never does solve the mystery of the private post and its sinister connections with the Yoyodyne group, but she finds something in herself, something beyond her Grad School training in 17th-century English literature, that allows her to soldier on and figure out just enough about these mysterious events to overcome (somewhat) her fear of the nameless dread that pervades her (and everyone else in SoCal's) existence. Oedipa really just wants to figure out what is happening to her marriage (to 'Mucho' Maas, a DJ for an underground radio channel in the Bay Area, who is chasing after his young female fans), but an earlier short affair in Mazatlán with Pierce Inverarity, the developer - who just wanted her for sex, sound familiar? - turns into a state-wide investigation when Pierce walks into the ocean one evening and never returns, having named Oedipa as the Executor of his vast estate, and Oedipa soon discovers secret links between some odd engineers at the SoCal Yoyodyne (think Rocketdyne) complex and a 16th Century private postal service with a violent past and a suspicious present (their symbol is a muted bugle horn). 4.7/10, lame, two thumbs down, below average, etc.In 1963, before Pynchon's Inherent Vice and 'Doc' Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson's faithful film version), there was Oedipa Maas in Pynchon's 'The Crying of Lot 49.' Both Doc and Oedipa are investigating strange goings-on in Southern California, and both have developed a well-deserved paranoia about the corruption and violence they are discovering, such as neo-Nazi thugs, unsolved murders, corrupt cops, and powerful real-estate developers who got rich turning SoCal deserts into vast tracts of houses and strip malls. It's not like this pissed me off, but it definitely disappointed me. I tried to stay away from reviews and plot synopses that weren't in the trailers, so I didn't know a whole lot, personally. I personally didn't know which opinion I'd have about this, but I know that a fair amount of people will know what they'll think of it before they see it. The stranger that sat next to me left the auditorium four times when he wasn't twiddling his thumbs for the latter half of the movie. There were two groups of people scattered throughout the packed crowd, one school laughing throughout and clapping at the end, and the other school really liking it at the beginning, only to grow antsy and bored. I do want to say this, though: the screening that I went to seemed to elicit a noticeable difference of reactions. Pair that with the 148-minute runtime, and this becomes a sort of chore to sit through, save for the occasional glimmers of solid humor. I remember a year ago when some people said that American Hustle became too contrived towards the end, but this is like that times twenty. It's not that it's reasonably complex, it's desperately complex. There's a difference between challenging movies and frustrating movies, and this movie fits into the latter. However, even these solid aspects are bogged down by a script and overall plot that's near-incomprehensible. The entire cast is very good, and they more or less act as the saving grace for this as an overall film. It has a nice use of bold colors and a pseudo-psychedelic aesthetic at times, and fittingly so. Jonny Greenwood's score is probably the best thing about the movie, Joaquin Phoenix is predictably great, and the film looks very nice at times. I will happily say that this movie is technically well made. I'm getting sick of writing stuff along the lines of "filmmakers need to know when to kill their darlings" because it not only makes me sound annoying, but the statement loses its gravity. It's around the 50-minute mark that this movie reaches the maximum number of plot contrivances for any movie ever, but it still goes on for almost another 95 minutes. Its first 30 minutes or so are great, and the next 20 minutes are pretty good. Oh, how it pains me to say this: Inherent Vice is boring. ![]()
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