Inherent Vice2014

Movie review score

Inherent Vice2014.DVDSCR.x264.AC3

During the psychedelic 60s and 70s Larry "Doc" Sportello is surprised by his former girlfriend and her plot for her billionaire boyfriend, his wife, and her boyfriend. A plan for kidnapping gets shaken up by the oddball characters entangled in this groovy kidnapping romp based upon the novel by Thomas Pynchon

User Reviews:

Larry "Doc" Sportello gazes out his window while smoking a joint when his ex- girlfriend Shasta suddenly shows up in his house. She tells him about a plan to team up with her current lover's wife to take his money and get him stuck in a mental hospital before disappearing back into the night. This strange event marks the beginning of a series of crazy interlocking mysteries all set in a pot-smoke filled LA.

This film, like most of Paul Thomas Anderson's work, will polarize its audiences. It takes bits and pieces of almost every genre and mashes them together into a beautiful, confusing, hilarious journey that really shows what cinema can do. Sometimes it feels like a "Hangover"-esque comedy, sometimes it feels like a 70s noir like "Chinatown," other times it feels like a stoner flick like "The Big Lebowski," but throughout all of this, it never stops feeling like a masterpiece unfolding.
What it comes down to is this--if you're the kind of person that cares more about characters and individual scenes than plot, this movie is for you. The plot definitely takes the back seat for this one and the power of individual scenes is what carries the whole movie and for me--that totally works. The movie is masterfully directed and acted and the scenes stir up a confusing batch of emotions in your heart, but your brain might not fully grasp what the heck is going on. You're not really watching a story unfold, you're watching a character unfold, and if you can accept that, you might just think it's one of the best films of 2014.

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