Inherent Vice

We can't criticize the incomprehensible nature of the movie because it was intentionally written that way to capture the tone of the novel. Eventhough I personally couldn't enjoy this movie, I completely understand why other people like it. I understand what they were going for but I couldn't connect with it personally. All the performances, especially by Phoenix and Brolin were top notch. Both those characters were written extremely well. There were some genuinely funny sequences too. However there are several instances where Doc relies on coincidences and conveniences to uncover the cases. This aspect felt like lazy writing.

I don't dislike this movie but I can't like it either. I have such a complicated opinion on this movie. PTA is one of the best directors working today. But I couldn't appreciate this movie like I did with his other movies like The Master, There will be blood etc.

Inherent Vice is certainly one of the most bizarre movies I've seen in a long, long time. Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrates his love of Thomas Pynchon by creating a movie that in every way feels Pynchon-esque. The film is a faithful adaption of Pynchon's late 00s novel but with a few minor sub-plots (such as the Las Vegas trip and the bets/claims) removed, not that they mattered really.

Joaquin Phoenix is one of my favourite actors and this movie - much like his previous one with PTA, The Master - is reason why. Phoenix plays a buffoonish caricature that sometimes makes us wonder if he was smoking actual pot during filming. Josh Brolin also provides a fine performance. There are a handful of women in the film but it's sad to say that they don't get enough attention in the film.

The dialogue is incoherent. You may not understand what's happening in the film at any certain time. You may ask: "what are they talking about?" "wait, what just happened?" Best reasoning I can provide is that this movie - much like its leading character - is high and rambles aimlessly here and there.

This film tells the story of a private detective in Los Angeles who investigates the disappearance of his former girlfriend and a rich real estate tycoon.

"Inherent Vice" has a super incoherent plot. Not only do I not understanding a thing while watching it, I still don't understand it even when I paused the film and read the plot synopsis regularly. So the detective investigates the case, then somehow the case is completely forgotten because a prostitute tells him about a shipment of heroin. There are just far too many characters in the film, each one of them doing their little bit in the story that does not glue together as a whole. Every subplot gets mentioned them dropped, without any satisfactory resolution. This film is a tremendous waste of time!

I think Anderson is amazing, one of the few directors of our time who can touch film-makers like Kubrick. But while the film is full of wonderful camera-work, production design and performances, and there are some very funny scenes, I couldn't quite get my head around the thing. I get that's the point, and that while Thomas Pynchon's novel has the outer form of a detective story, it's not really about plot but about mood and playful mind-games, details and surreal moments. But somehow the lack of tonal focus made it hard for me to get lost in it's rhythms.

Feeling like a goofy comedy one minute, a subtle satiric elegy for a hippie age that was never quite as fun as we'd like to remember the next, and a story driven detective noir the next, I found myself not getting engaged in the way I kept wanting to.

Given the talents involved, my huge admiration for Anderson, and the generally great critical reaction, I'm open to the idea that I'm missing something. And there are a lot of moments that echo with me, from Josh Brolin's truly gonzo, but yet also somehow understated performance as an uptight, straight-laced cop who is a lot more complex and messed up then he'd like to admit, to the very long single take seduction scene between Joaquin Phoenix and Katherine Waterston that is uncomfortable, sexy, repellent, real, a fantasy and beautifully acted all at the same time.

It's certainly a film worth seeing, but for the first time with an Anderson film I felt locked on the outside looking in, feeling a little sheepish and a little dumb.

I loved this film. A lot of people don't like this film because the plot is very confusing and hard to follow but the whole message of the film is that sometimes life doesn't wrap things up in a nice little bow and sometimes everything doesn't come together in the end. I've seen this film a few times now and I like it more everytime I see it. The first time I didn't really like it because I was trying to keep up and get my head around the plot but after I became enlightened to the theme, then I was just able to sit back and experience the journey. It is a great character study. Joaquín pheonix is fantastic and his character is great, all the characters and performances in this film are great and fun, Josh Brolin works really well and had great chemistry with Pheonix, and Martin Short was hilarious when he came into the film he was amazing. There were so many great moments and great lines scattered about like when he visits the golden fang institute. The dialogue on the whole is inconsistent as a lot of it is exposition for the plot but when it isn't that it was fantastic. This is one of the most enjoyable films because you don't need to worry about understanding the plot because you're not supposed to understand it and instead just sit back and relax. The directing is great as always from PTA, the film is really well made. My only criticisms are the film gets weaker in the last 20 mins or so and probably should've ended earlier and that some of the dialogue is just exposition. However I love this film on the whole, I love the soundtrack and the unsatisfying ending reflects the whole film, it reflects the character and how really he gets nothing done in the whole film. And it also reflects life, and how in life often things don't have satisfying endings.