Inherent Vice

'Inherent Vice' is the next feature film from Paul Thomas Anderson and you can tell. It boasts a great soundtrack, brilliant acting and a very convoluted story as it tells the story of a private detective (Phoenix) as he investigates into the disappearance of a former girlfriend.

The screenplay is very confusing. It is hard to follow and purposely so as it introduces many characters and multiple stories but I have heard that this aspect of the screenplay is very true to the original source material. All I could do was admit that the film was too bewildering and to enjoy the many jokes and humorous situations.

Joaquin Phoenix is tremendous as the main character Larry "Doc" Sportello. He is complimented with a great supporting cast such...

I kind of feel that Anderson lends himself to a film like this. He uses a lot of extreme wide angles and if you ever smoked a little dope in college the world looks a little like when you mount that 18mm on your SLR. His choice of lenses lends itself to telling the story of a guy like Doc without going over the top ala Fear and Loathing and making it a little too blatantly FX.

The humor works in best possible dry as a martini kind of way, and it's played straight like comedy should be.

But really, the premise sold me. Take a hard boiled film noir kind of mystery and replace Sam Spade with the perpetual stoner and then watch him try to solve a mystery.

It's incoherent enough to make you believe that Doc is just a little too rocked t...