Inherent Vice
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
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At this point, Paul Thomas Anderson has basically established himself as a master filmmaker. I consider Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Boogie Nights to be modern-day classics, and as far as I'm concerned, he can do no wrong...until now that is. Inherent Vice, faithfully adapted from a perplexing novel by Thomas Pynchon, makes no sense. That's just an objective fact - even critics who claim to love this movie will admit it. The story follows "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a pot-smoking (among other things) hippie detective from the early 70's - who's tasked by his former girlfriend, Shasta (Katherine Waterston), to help her with a situation involving real estate tycoon Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), whose wife is plotting to send him to the looney bin. But soon both Shasta and Mickey go missing, and the rest of the movie is just a complete mess of barely coherent A-to-B "detective" work. I understand the whole point of the disjointed narrative is to emulate Doc's marijuana-laced mindset, but to spend over two hours watching a movie with no clear narrative through-line, even with some funny character moments along the way, was just not enjoyable to sit through.
In its isolated scenes, Inherent Vice does have some really funny moments though. Particularly Josh Brolin, playing the "square" (both literally and figuratively) police detective "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, has some inspired moments with a frozen banana. And Phoenix's performance, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum as The Master, delivers some memorably hilarious reaction shots, using every muscle of his facial features to exaggerate his feelings. The movie also has some amazing, colorful cinematography by frequent Anderson collaborator Robert Elswit - but my compliments trail off there. I seriously couldn't make heads or tails out of the story happening on screen. And not in a fun, "The Shining" sort of way, more in a confused, frustrating kind of way. All the positive reviews for the film say to just let the movie's images "wash" over you - I don't know what the hell that means, I just know that this was confusing, and almost worse than that, confusing on purpose (which to me is less creative than pretentious). While some scenes were actually really funny, they still didn't mean anything to me because I didn't understand how they fit into the overall story. Because it's PTA it demands a re-watch, but I didn't dig it the first go-round.
Rating: C
Selma
Dir. Ava DuVernay
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It's strange to think, but Selma is actually the first biopic detailing the life of Martin Luther King. Much like Spielberg's Lincoln, Ava DuVernay's historical drama centers its subject not as some sort of Christ-like icon, but simply as a man trying to get shit done. It's a noble depiction to go with, and I commend the effort and respect that the filmmakers gave to this project, but unfortunately it fell short for me. First, I thought that David Oyewlo's rendering of King went a little too much into the "anti-icon" strata, as he literally mumbles his way through every non-speech scene in the movie. I mean, I get it, but his "charismatic leader" qualities that made him the central figure of the civil rights movement really didn't come through for me. Also, many of his supporting cast members, played by a ton of wonderful actors (like Wendell Pierce from The Wire and Lorraine Toussaint from Orange is the New Black), are barely given anything to do. The ending of the film, like seemingly every biopic ever made, superimposes text over certain key figures to say what happened after the events of the film; some of the characters in the montage didn't have ONE LINE in the movie.
Also, the "bad guys" in the movie: LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) and the Governor of Alabama George Wallace (Tim Roth) are portrayed as nothing more than idiotic racists. Even if this is true, they come off as cartoonish in their decisions. I'm currently going through The Wire right now (I know, I'm late to 'the game'), and the brilliance of that show is that even the upper-level assholes are given reasons for their institutionalized idiocy, bringing a complex layer of grayness to the good and bad at work. Heck, even 12 Years a Slave managed to give the tyrannical Michael Fassbender character a businessman-like reason (albeit a horrific, non-logical one) for keeping his slaves. But here LBJ simply doesn't want black people to vote, just 'cause. He's got "other stuff to do."
I honestly don't understand the voluminous praise this movie is getting. Maybe I'm ignorant or something, but I thought this moved glacially slow, the mumbling MLK was a little tiring, and I didn't really feel the upswell of emotion I was supposed to. I will say that the actual "Selma" sequence was choreographed really well, and I do like the concept of an icon brought down to "our" level, but it wasn't executed in a way that grabbed my attention.
Rating: C
The Homesman
Dir. Tommy Lee Jones
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The Western has always been a pretty male-centric genre, and The Homesman, surprisingly coming from a "man's man" like Tommy Lee Jones, beautifully and tragically shows the struggles women faced in the Wild West. Hilary Swank stars as Mary Bee Cuddy, an uncommonly single Nebraskan frontier farm woman, deemed too "plain" to take a husband. Still headstrong, she takes on the task of escorting three literally insane women to a safe house in Iowa, with the help of George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), a claim-jumper who she saves from a lynching. The difficult journey the two endure carrying these women to me was both touching and traumatizing. The ladies, Cuddy included, are all victims in their own right of the male-dominated West, and to see Jones' character shift from a rough-and-tumble guy to a truly humble man, I have to admit, pressed my emotional buttons. I'm not sure why there isn't as much buzz for this movie as others, but I thought this was a well put-together Western with some great performances (with side characters played by the likes of James Spader, John Lithgow, Tim Blake Nelson, Breaking Bad's Jesse Plemons, William Fichtner, Meryl Streep - how did a movie with such a cast go so unnoticed?). A little slow in parts, but I thought The Homesman was a touching, funny, tragic genre piece.
Rating: B+
The Gambler
Dir. Rupert Wyatt
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Rupert Wyatt directed one of my favorite summer blockbusters of the past decade, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but his latest, The Gambler, a remake of the 1974 James Caan movie, is decidedly smaller in scale. Mark Wahlberg plays literature professor Jim Bennett, who lives a "second" life as a high-stakes gambler. The thing is, he sucks at gambling and constantly loses. Addicted to his risk-taking behavior, he borrows and loses a huge chunk of change from both a gangster (Michael K. Williams, aka "Omar" from The Wire) and the owner of an underground gambling ring (Alvin Ing), who gives him seven days to pay up or he'll murder him. All the while, Bennett swoons over one of his students (Brie Larsen), gets involved with a violent loan shark (John Goodman), and wastes his mother's (Jessica Lange) fortune - making him one of the most unlikable characters ever.
This movie maybe would have worked better with a more appropriate leading man. I don't know why people keep casting Mark Wahlberg as "brilliant," philosophizing guys, but it never works. And he just can't pull off a character this cold and purposely unsympathetic (heck, even someone like Jessie Eisenberg was better in The Social Network at taking a "bad" character and infusing him with some sort of humanity). Not making things better, the script is just a mess, and Wahlberg's "class sessions" have some really cringe-worthy lines. There are some interesting ideas littered throughout, such as people not being able to help "being themselves" (my favorite scene takes place in a pawn shop, where the owner can't help but haggle down the price of a watch), but none are executed particularly clearly or effectively.
Rating: C
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