Inherent Vice

A mess, but P.T. Anderson gets brownie points for trying to adapt a Thomas Pynchon novel into a movie. And this is a very ambitious, literary film, with plenty of voiceover narration provided by dulcet toned Joanna Newsom, and the expansive feeling of curling up with a loopy book that never seems to end.
I can understand why Anderson may think that this comic noir shaggy dog story set in 1970 Los Angeles is worth telling now. If anything sums up the spirit of the movie, is the picture above. We think we don't, but we live in a dark place. As the rest of his movies (with the exception of Punch Drunk Love), Inherent Vice takes a look at yet another side of the prismatic underside of American culture.
Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix, munching the scenery), some sort of doctor stoner who moonlights as a P.I, gets dragged like Alice in Wonderland into a spiral of bizarre goings on under the placid LA skies, coming in contact with all kinds of quirky characters from all walks of life. There are tiny roles for the likes of Benicio Del Toro, Maya Rudolph, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short (who seems to have landed from another circus altogether), Owen Wilson, and the much missed (by me) Eric Roberts, who has two seconds of screen time and kills. We barely get to spend any time with them before Doc is hurled into some other crazy situation. I don't think it is worth trying to unravel the plot. The idea is what is below the surface, what fresh and vast conspiracies really run the show.
Doc reminded me of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, he is that laid back and unhurried, although he may be a little less serene. Phoenix is one of those great hams who can do no wrong. Even when he is reaching he is interesting to watch, and he can be funny. Josh Brolin plays his foil and opposite, Lt. Det. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, (bless Pynchon and his wacky names) a square headed policeman with none of the lazy savoir faire of Doc. He is hilarious. Their scenes together are the best thing in the movie. Unfortunately, Anderson doesn't have the wacky comic touch of the Coens and the humor feels labored.
At two hours and a half, Inherent Vice is hard to sit through. The scenes take forever, the wild goose chases don't seem to gather momentum, let alone go anywhere coherent, and though I completely get that this may be on purpose, to give us the density of time as experienced by a stoner, it drags.
Robert Elswit's washed out cinematography and sometimes deliberately ugly framing captures the era but bores the eye. And I found Jonny Greenwood's score underwhelming, though the pop songs on the soundtrack are great.
I have a nagging feeling that perhaps a second viewing may bring more pleasures, but Inherent Vice is, like The Master, an intellectual exercise that fails to live up to its ambitious promise. The Master is gorgeous, sharper, and more jarring. This one is just exhausting.
However, as a body of work, Anderson's films gain in stature because there is a very coherent thematic preoccupation running through them. He likes to find the cobwebs and the dirt under the American entrepreneurial soul. Hard Eight, his impressive and modest debut, takes place around gamblers, Boogie Nights is about a community of porn stars trying to make it, Magnolia is a dark, enigmatic piece about family, There Will Be Blood, about the drive for profit, The Master is about the American obsession with perfecting (and controlling) the individual and our cottage industry of charlatans, and Inherent Vice is about the rivers of rot that course through our enterprising American veins. Anderson looks at the fringes, and under the polished surfaces of our increasingly frayed collective delusion of democracy, freedom and high standards of living. He is not buying any of it and that makes him a very interesting, if somewhat exasperating artist.

Dear White People

Director Justin Simien's awkward satire promises far more than it delivers, although it does pack a punch of provocative racial invective. Some of it is funny, but in general the script could have benefited from extensive polishing. I admire the gumption behind the idea of making a comedy that exposes racist attitudes in American colleges, based on actual offensive parties that have sprung in several campuses recently, but the execution is underbaked. Just because characters sling shocking racial accusations at each other, it doesn't mean that the artistic merit is as high as their shock value.
Simien has a bizarre sense of comic timing (barely any at all) that smothers any hint of comedic buoyancy. He is tonally awkward. Most scenes are underwritten and go nowhere. Characters take forever to deliver their punchlines. The actors, although capable, are not inherently comedic performers. Simien's stylistic choices are also wrong for the material: polished cinematography which looks like a decently lit TV show, with no expressive edge.
The tone hovers between dry satire and almost melodrama. The characters are thinly sketched, and for the most part, badly cast. The heroine, a lovely girl called Sam (Tessa Thompson), has a college radio show in which she berates white people for being white, as in: "Dear white people: stop dancing". But as written and acted, Sam has not a funny bone in her body. She is self-righteous, which in the hands of inspired comedians can be hilarious (think of Will Ferrell's persona, always so sure he is right, when in fact he's totally clueless). Sam is just self-righteous, and she is pissed off, and though there is nothing wrong with righteous anger, for it to be funny, it should be tempered with something absurd to undercut it, or at the very least with comic verve (Spike Lee was self-righteous and angry, but he could be funny. Also, Richard Pryor).
I don't think it is the actors' fault, but rather the result of immature script and directorial choices which strand the actors in stereotypes. Sam is of mixed race but this is not really contrast, because it is the result of circumstance, not of personality. Most black characters are stereotypes with a circumstantial conflict: the son of the college's black dean is a white wannabe (an oreo, is it?), who is ambitious and handsome, but he smokes pot in hiding. The educated black girl who refuses to be ghetto, but will outghetto herself in order to give the people what they want. A black gay nerd, played by Tyler James Williams, is the only character who is interesting to watch, even if he seems to have flown in from a different movie.
The white characters are all one dimensional stereotypes. There is no attempt to render them any differently. Perhaps this is on purpose. Imagine how black people feel at looking at themselves in the media through a limited amount of types from central casting. White people who complain that this movie is racist against them are missing the point. For one, the black characters viciously stereotype each other, just to add salt to the wound of ingrained bad cultural habits. Two, I never understand when whites whine about black racism. How could black Americans not be racist?
Simien completely avoids the representations of blacks we are used to seeing in pop culture. Quite deliberately, he avoids sassy fat mamas, twerking hoes, hooded drug dealers, the motley crew of black "characters" that permeate our media. In fact, this is the most radical thing about this movie: it forces us to see these educated, ambitious middle class black kids as the norm, not as aliens from a fictional planet, or as politically correct wishful thinking. It also points out how even within black culture certain characters are off limits, like the gay black nerd. This is shocking: to realize the dearth of fully composed black characters in our culture, to realize that we are still being fed a bunch of stereotypes, perhaps softened from the days of blackface, but which still do not represent the diversity of blacks in America, often with the collusion of black people themselves. Simien introduces two different mixed race couples. We rarely see people like them on TV or film, laying waste to the idea that this is not normal simply by cuddling, even when they relate to each other in terms of race. They have more of an impact than all the verbal race baiting.

Gone Girl

This twisted tale about a marriage on the rocks, adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own novel, is given the neat, brisk polish of a David Fincher production. The plot is rather outlandish, but what is interesting is the context. Nick and Amy Dunne seem to be the perfect couple. Yet anything can conspire to bring hardship into a marriage. In their case, the loss of a job, a parent's illness, money problems, moving from New York City to a generic town in Missouri, arguing about whether to have kids, the usual stuff that stifles romance in the privacy of home. Things turn sour.
Amy is the daughter of two creepily successful parents (David Clennon and Lisa Banes) who turned her young life into a series of children's books a la Madeline. Amy (Rosamund Pike) claims that all the ideal things that happen to her in the books were imaginary improvements upon her real life. The movie is too a story about the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we make up for others, and the stories that others make up about us.
Nick comes home one day to find Amy gone, apparently under the threat of violence. He cooperates with the local police, who do not arrest him, probably because he's white and lives in a big house. As played by Ben Affleck, Nick is sympathetic, but flat. He doesn't pander to the media circus that wants him to play the grieving husband, and some of his habits should be cause for concern, such as having whisky for breakfast.
I don't know if Nick is supposed to be a cipher, but the movie and the character would be richer if we could see more of the wheels turning in his head. As the story evolves, a lot is revealed about him but Affleck's performance is not layered, and Nick seems a hollow man. Pike is very good as ice queen Amy, but I wish there were more ambiguity to her, that we could sympathize more.
The plot has many fun twists, but I found the idea of a man suddenly hunted by the media more interesting than the pulpy story. Nick seems to be oblivious to the demands that the omnipresent media places on any citizen who gets thrown into the spotlight. Not so his parents in law, whose media savvy borders on the sinister. They know just what kind of show to put on. Histrionic newswomen (Missy Pyle and Sela Ward, both pitch perfect) crucify Nick over the disappearance of his wife without regard for evidence, crafting the clichéd story they think the public wants to hear: a simplified tale of a victim and a villain, which they use drum up ratings and egg on the whims of public opinion.
Eager townspeople relish their part in the morality play, doing mediagenic searches and vigils: the American penchant for putting on a spectacle of empathy every time somebody (usually white) falls down a well. I really liked this about Gone Girl. It has a brittle view of the American media circus and the public as a willing accomplice to its excesses.
Who is to be believed? First we hear Nick's side of the story. Then we hear Amy's. It's more than a he said/she said thing. Gone Girl is a dark metaphor for the pitfalls of marriage taken to extremes. How do we act as a couple, in public, in private and with one another?  Do we really know our better halves? What are the acts we put on to keep the marriage going? Is it all a performance, a sham?
Neither Nick nor Amy are as wholesome as they would like to seem, but our perception of them changes as the point of view shifts. Our sympathies tend to lie with the person telling the story. They may switch as we hear the other side, only to find out that the versions contradict each other. Now we don't know who to believe. Rashomon meets Fatal Attraction.
Flynn and Fincher handle the shifts in perspective with economy and precision. Fincher tamps down his customary glossy style, as if he's trying for an Anywhere, U.S.A kind of vibe. But the film has a strain of wry, dark humor that separates it from a made for TV movie. It has some bitter ironies, from their pious and unapologetic participation of the public in the demonization of Nick and the canonization of Amy, to the grotesque karmic stuff that befalls her, which is very funny, if it weren't so violent,  and all the perverse turns which I won't spoil here. Except for a visit to a crystal meth den that seems too photogenic to be real, Fincher keeps an elegant grip on the story. I wish the main characters were less dispassionate, more messy, more made of flesh and bone.

Listen Up Philip

A brazen dark comedy that does everything they tell you not to do in screenwriting school, Listen Up Philip, written and directed by Alex Ross Perry, is the story of Philip Lewis Friedman, an ambitious young writer, (Jason Schwartzman, in his best movie role yet), who is an unrepentant asshole. He is solely concerned with himself, he is cruel to his friends, horrible to his lovers, and refuses to do publicity for his book, which is like being Satan in the publishing industry. Movie heroes are supposed to be likable, or as they say, relatable. Philip is not only flawed; he is a horror. Schwartzman finds the right amount of deadpan, contemptuous self-regard, and somehow makes him funny.
Like in a book, the movie is narrated with big, polysyllabic words by an omniscient narrator with a soothing, sexy voice that belongs to the wonderful Eric Bogosian. This is a literary movie about the petty, insular literary world, breaking unspoken rule number two: "thou shalt not make movies about writers".
Philip is anxious about the publication and success of his book, about writing a new one and about the indignities of people's demands on him. All they ask from him is respect, attention and some modicum of humility, none of which he is capable of summoning. He's the kind of guy who reads about someone else's tragedy and takes it as something that deflects attention from him. His ego is inconsolable.
He is a ladies' man (girls do fall for forbidding, enigmatic literary types), but he lives with his lovely, inexplicable girlfriend Ashley (Elizabeth Moss, fantastic, as always), a successful photographer. She endures his monstrous selfishness with decreasing good humor. She is as full of feeling as he is full of himself, and thus plays not only his girlfriend but his foil. She ventures out into the world, while he remains trapped in his own calculated aloofness.
As he only cares about his own fate, Philip endears himself to Ike Zimmerman, an older, very successful writer, played as the living portrait of needy egocentrism masquerading as wisdom by the great Jonathan Pryce. The cleverest thing in the movie is a montage of the book covers of Ike's successful novels. They are spoofs of Philip Roth novels, seventies' book jacket design and chunky typeface included.
That Philip is virtually this man's younger version is apparent to everyone but Philip. There is something poignant about having the future version of you in front of you, so you can take notes on who and who not to become, but Philip doesn't seem to learn much from his mentor. It's not clear whether Philip sees himself as a future Ike, whether he wants or not to be like him, or learns from how sad it is to grow old with success, yet not ever shaking off an almost crippling insecurity, which translates as arrogance, contempt and mistrust for everyone.
Philip strikes a friendship with Ike, which means he must endure Ike's mastery at undermining. Pryce also manages not to make his character totally odious. He has a daughter, the wonderful Krysten Ritter, whom he treats badly. There could be a semblance of a hate-love flirtation between her and Philip but Ross Perry does not pursue that.
I wish the camera work was not as shaky (cinematographer du jour Sean Price Williams, jerking it all over the place), the sound was better, and the jazz sax score less intrusive. But it's the actors who do justice to the bitter tone of the film.
During the second act, Philip virtually disappears from the screen and we follow Ashley's life without him. It's hard to understand what she saw in him, but Moss is alive with possibility. In the end, Philip remains unredeemable, which breaks the next rule of screenwriting. The flawed hero must change, or find redemption, or learn something. It doesn't happen. So how come this movie is not depressing and hateful? Ashley's determined moxie makes up for it. She's a hero for putting up with Philip, and even more for sticking to her guns and her dignity.
This is a comedy, so there is a happy ending of sorts; a bittersweet, rather abrupt ending. This contrarian, off-kilter film is a good companion piece to Birdman, which also deals with creative egotists, with more budget and much less bile.

Foxcatcher

A horror film. As dark a movie as you'll ever see with a Hollywood cast, Bennett Miller's film about millionaire John du Pont's relationship with Olympic wrestling champions Mark and Dave Schultz, is profoundly disturbing. I came out of it wanting to dunk myself in a bath of Clorox. This is high praise. I, for one, am grateful for an American film that challenges our increasingly unsustainable obsession with heroism.
Like most movies based on real stories, Foxcatcher may not be entirely faithful to the real events that transpired, but it takes them as a springboard to explore the corrupting power of money.
It is about a loser with all the money in the world, an extremely creepy Steve Carell, who takes Mark Schultz (a solid Channing Tatum), an Olympic gold winner with zero money, under his wing. du Pont is obsessed with Olympic wrestling, with patriotism, winning, guns and the American way. He is heir to the enormous du Pont fortune and he lives alone; that is, with his disapproving mother (Vanessa Redgrave, doing almost nothing and killing it). He is unloved and deeply warped by unhappy money.
The real heroes, the Schultz brothers, are hardworking regular people trying to make a living. Somehow, they were unable or were not chosen to parlay their olympic gold medals into endorsement deals. So they are losers, stuck working hard to eke out a life. Meanwhile, John Eleuthére du Pont, scion of a blue blood American family is, by all accounts, a winner. He has inherited everything he could possibly want, except what he can't have, which is a life. du Pont is a failed athlete, a wannabe coach. He wants to be a mentor, father figure, brother, teacher to a winner, by which he assumes he will garner the admiration of the entire nation. But he is too feeble, or too pathetic, or too damaged to do anything worthy. Thus, he achieves personal glory by buying his prestige.
It is possible that he wants to be the father he wishes he had, or that he gets a kick out of watching semi-naked muscular men pile up on top of each other. Wisely, Miller and the screenwriters (Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye) don't clutter the film with cheap psychology or flashbacks of his lonely childhood. In one scene, he opens up to Mark, and with one line about a childhood friend, we learn all we need to know about what it is like to be him.
Miller lets the story unfold at a stately pace as we watch with growing despair how toxic du Pont's embrace of Mark Schultz is. Carrell, sporting a fake nose, bad teeth, bad skin, and bad eyes, summons a man who seems to be asphyxiating under his own repression, of something so bottled up, it sucks the life out of anyone, including himself. He is an inspired choice, since as a comedian, and particularly as Michael Scott, in The Office, Carell has demonstrated he's capable of going to uncomfortable extremes of maladroitness, self-delusion, self-absorption and lack of social finesse. Even though the character of John du Pont is humorless, he cuts so ridiculous a figure as a wrestling groupie, Carell finds ways to sneak in the funny, in a very unsettling way. Like Michael Scott, du Pont is a loser with power, but from hell and on steroids.
du Pont wants the Schultz brothers to come to his remote mansion and train with him, but David (an excellent Mark Ruffalo), the eldest, and the real father figure to Mark, is a high school coach and a decent family man, and he doesn't want to go. However, with enough bags of money, du Pont eventually lures him. You think you can't buy integrity? Think again. du Pont's money is as irresistible to David and the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Federation as it must be to our long-suffering representatives, who can't campaign for office without begging for corporate munificence. Once the checks are written, politicians cannot be beholden to anyone but their benefactors, just as Mark and David have to cater to the man who is buying their lives. It is true corruption and it destroys everything.
One can extrapolate this story of one rich man's capacity to buy everything with money with the nature of life in America. After all, du Pont is a patriot, as concerned with the notion of freedom as any of those rapacious Republican titans of industry who bandy the term about only for what suits them. He talks in empty platitudes about freedom. A freedom that apparently only applies to those with means. Freedom to buy your way around so that everybody is at your service. The kind of freedom that turns others into slaves.
In du Pont's admiration for Mark there must be a tinge of envy. His is not the well-intentioned attention of a real mentor. It's the manipulation of a narcissist. Miller doesn't tip his hand before he has to, which makes Foxcatcher a harrowing movie. As we discover du Pont's mind games, and his psychological troubles, we realize in growing horror that his charitable motivations are a calculated ruse to aggrandize himself. His manipulations and his detachment from normality really creep up on you.
With enough money, everything becomes a circus. The wrestlers have no choice but to indulge du Pont's pathetic coaching fantasies. In this movie, du Pont can't wrestle, let alone coach, his way out of a paper bag, nor can he be a true role model for anyone, since it is all a lie. Perhaps if he were a European aristocrat, he'd be content to snort his millions up his nose, lose them at Monte Carlo, waste them at Saint Tropez, or whatever it is those people do. But as an American, he is delirious with the imperative to be heroic. He has the misfortune of being a loser in the land that does not suffer them gladly. But unlike most losers, he is armed with money, and extremely dangerous.