Inherent Vice
First screened in January 2015 / Most recently screened in October 2025
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Joanna Newsom, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Eric Roberts, Hong Chau, Martin Short, Michael K. Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Serena Scott Thomas, Jeannie Berlin, Jordan Christian Hearn, Yvette Yates, Belladonna, Sam Jaeger, Timothy Simons, Sasha Pieterse, Jefferson Mays, Keith Jardine, Peter McRobbie, Martin Donovan, Taylor Bonin, Maya Rudolph, Andrew Simpson, Jillian Bell, Delaina Hlavin. Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson (based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon).

 Twitter Capsule: (Jan 2015) I'll grant it works without any net and may need more viewings. But neither material nor talent shows to advantage.

In Brief: (Oct 2025) Semi-constant evidence of one master adapting another. Still, spry star and sharp craft aside, the whole just sags.

VOR: ④  More fascinating than satisfying, in context of Anderson's work (so little effort to charm here, or show off!) and in that of its genre.


   
Photo © 2014 Warner Bros. Pictures
Imagine a Pacific beach at dusk, sunny but with a notably chill wind, where a whole circle of surfer hippies are frolicking and warming themselves not around a campfire but around a blazing, Wicker Man-sized tower of marijuana. Surrounding this scene, not too close and not too far, is an undulating perimeter of feds and local police, eagle-eyeing the wave-catchers and flower children and dropouts, hands near their guns yet preoccupied, too, with their own intramural dramas and mutual penis envy and petty, long-game vengeances. Every once in a while, if you watch the hippies long enough, you'll spot one peel off from the group and snitch to the cops about someone in their dreamy, flaky circle, into which they quickly reabsorb themselves. Maybe they have their reasons; you're too far away to hear anything. Every once in a while, you'll spot one of the cops slink over to a large, semi-separated passel of hippies sitting cross-legged in the sand, laboring over a quickly expanding set of corn-husk dolls wearing exquisite 1970s getup—much of it photorealistic in texture and detail, some of it jacked up a bit for creepy or comic effect. As time passes, you have a sinister impression of fewer and fewer hippies and of more and more police, but the sun's going down, and it's harder to tell them apart. You can't make out if those are human silhouettes or just shadows in the backs of the cop cars, and you aren't positive that everybody who skipped off into the ocean ever returned. The blazing tower of dope is starting to gutter down into ash, but the corn-husk dolls are beginning to glow. Mysteriously, they have become their own light source, and the last one left. You still can't hear a word anyone is saying, even though you're standing pretty nearby.

This is the scene you've stumbled upon. It's called Inherent Vice. Do you:
  1. Stay planted there for hours, or maybe even join into the enigmatic scene, because you've never seen anything this creepy and magical, and it seems like anything could happen

  2. Sprint immediately in the other fucking direction

  3. Take it all in for a while but then move along, because whatever's going on here, beyond just being unnerving, is just not your scene.
I am “C.” In Letterboxd terms, that equates to three stars. I admired Inherent Vice way more often than I enjoyed it but there was a firm ceiling on both those responses, despite my hunch that a second try a decade later would warm me to it. I'm ready to move on now from this film, though I suspect I'd like the book better. I wonder if PTA likes the book more than his own movie? I also have a theory that full affection for all 148 minutes of Inherent Vice might require you to have smoked pot at least once in your life. I'll take the loss. Grade: B–

Academy Award Nominations:
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges

Golden Globe Nominations:
Best Actor (Musical/Comedy): Joaquin Phoenix

Other Awards:
Independent Spirit Awards: Robert Altman Award (Ensemble Cast)
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Original Score (Jonny Greenwood; tie)
Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Use of Music in a Film
National Board of Review: Best Adapted Screenplay
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