There’s drugs and free love a’plenty in Inherent Vice, but the characters steal the show
Doc’s Orders
By Tom Meek
Clearly Paul Thomas Anderson has a thing for the storied eras of America’s past. Boogie Nights welcomed in the rise of the porn industry during the flared-pant, disco-fueled ‘70s; the more nuanced The Master took up the arc of an L. Ron Hubbard-like charlatan in the wake WWII; while There Will be Bloodnegotiated the nasty, avaricious early roots of the American oil grab. Anderson’s latest, Inherent Vice, is no exception. In texture it’s an ode to the psychedelic ‘70s of free love and rampant recreational drug use.
Anderson’s always been a contemplative filmmaker with a keen sense of perverse quirk, and those qualities really come to the fore in Inherent Vice, a gumshoe noir on LSD if ever there was one. The stalwart indie director —who proved his ability to handle the opus works of literary lions by spinning Upton Sinclair’s Oil! into There Will be Blood — delves deep into Thomas Pychon’s far-roaming 2009 novel with baroque gusto. Continue reading
The Jolie slam gave me pause. She’s always conducted herself in ways that have invited ridicule (her blood vial marriage to Billy Bob Thornton, the incestuous podium posing with her brother and the weird, estranged relationship with dad, actor Jon Voight). But how could the woman who won an Academy Award (for “Girl Interrupted”) and made an impressive directorial debut with “Blood and Honey” – a provocative, Bosnian-Serbian updating of “Romeo and Juliet” – be “talentless”? 
Vallée’s not the only person on “Wild” wearing two hats: Witherspoon bought the film rights to Strayed’s memoir and earns a producer’s cred as well. She’s dutiful as Strayed (not the writer’s given name, but the apt name she takes after her personal demons derail her first marriage) setting out on the arduous walkabout to find herself, purge and repent. When we meet her she’s angry at the mountain and nature, having just lost her hiking boots atop a summit, and we flash back to the start of the trek to see Strayed even more naive in the ways of navigating the wild. 
While “The Cruise” was a straight-up documentary, “Capote” (2005) and “Moneyball” (2011) were liberal, adapted spins on real lives and real events, both featuring outstanding performances by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and the latter garnering perhaps the finest performance of Brad Pitt’s long career. Miller’s latest, “Foxcatcher” is dead in the mold of those films, and the indie auteur’s most soul-plumbing film so far. 
The good news for all our collective futures is that farmer Matthew McConaughey is a former NASA pilot; the bad news is that NASA no longer exists, but through a paranormal, “Close Encounters” kind of interference, the southern drawling actor’s Cooper is pointed to a grid point on the map not too far away where the vestiges of the space agency – and the hope of humankind – reside with Michael Caine and his daughter, Anne Hathaway. Cooper is the only one with mission experience, and before the clock ticks any further he and Hathaway’s Amelia Brand are on a turbo-charged space shuttle-like vehicle and heading toward a black hole. 
