Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Inherent Vice

 Well, let's start the uphill battle that is putting Inherent Vice on a "Best Of" list, because everywhere I look, there's hate for this movie. Like, serious, seething, "how could you like that movie?!?" hate for Inherent Vice. To me, it's mind boggling the negativity surrounding this film, and I've read articles like "How to Make a Movie People Will Walk Out Of" or listened to Red Letter Media snarkily insinuate that anyone who says they "understood" Inherent Vice is "lying" and trying to look cool to their film snob friends. I would say that Inherent Vice is a divisive film, but it feels like there's not much of a divide: everybody hates it, and the people who don't (and I haven't found many) are somehow deluded or outright lying to maintain their "cred".  So I get that you don't like it, but I'm not sure why, and I'm not delusional or trying to earn "hip" points. It's not "Paul Thomas Anderson's worst movie," although I've seen that one a few times.

 Was is because the trailer made it look like Paul Thomas Anderson's The Big Lebowski and it's not? Because it's not: it's Paul Thomas Anderson's The Long Goodbye, but we'll get to that? Is it because of some perceived "impenetrability" based solely on the fact Anderson adapted it from a Thomas Pynchon novel, and you've heard Thomas Pynchon novels are notoriously impenetrable? I suppose it's not going to matter to you that I read Inherent Vice, and not only is it easy to follow, but Anderson dropped two subplots and half a dozen characters, making the movie easier to follow. Was it because most of Doc (Joaquin Phoenix)'s dialogue is mumbled? Okay, I'll give you that one. Yeah, you're going to have to pay attention. It is a mystery, and yeah, there are a lot of pieces in the air for Anderson to juggle. You're going to have to do a little bit of work keeping up, and both the novel and film throw a lot of names at you.

 (The following paragraphs are going SPOIL plot elements in an effort to clarify lingering questions)

 On the other hand, there are only two that are really important: Larry "Doc" Sportello and Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston). Throw in Lieutenant Detective Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) if you want, but most of the rest of it is window dressing. The Golden Fang (boat and organization) is pretty much a MacGuffin, but if it helps, it's a government run operation designed to get people hooked on heroin, clean them out, and convince them to work as double agents in the counterculture. That's exactly what happens to Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), who was planning on spending his fortune to make free housing possible. (Anderson drops the part of Pynchon's book where the government also wants him to invest in a run-down Las Vegas casino in order to get a foothold in the area). The entire Golden Fang operation is explained during the scene when Doc and Sauncho (Benicio Del Toro) are in the seafood restaurant.

 I'm not entirely sure why it's hard to keep up with, because in this regard you don't even need to read the book, but all of Doc's cases are tied together: Tariq Khalil (Michael Kenneth Williams) is looking for his associate Glenn Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), who is killed when Doc goes to visit the housing development. Glenn's sister, Charla (Beladonna) comes to visit Doc later. Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), left his family to be a government informant, and ended up working for the Golden Fang. Bigfoot's partner was killed by Adrian Prussia (Peter McRobbie) and Puck Beaverton (Keith Jardine), so Bigfoot uses Doc to even the score and then steals the Golden Fang's heroin shipment. Doc uses the heroin as leverage to make a deal that returns Coy to his wife, Hope (Jenna Malone), solving that case. All of this happens in service of putting Doc and Shasta back together, even if "this doesn't mean we're back together."

 Yes, I left out a lot of other characters, but just like The Long Goodbye (directed by Robert Altman, based on a Raymond Chandler novel), many of the supporting cast members are for decoration. It's not really important that you remember who Denis (Jordan Christian Hearn) is other than he hangs out with Doc. Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd (Martin Short) is there to give you some idea of how reckless the Golden Fang is. Penny (Reese Witherspoon) provides Doc with the evidence that ties Coy into the conspiracy surrounding Wolfmann. Japonica Fenway (Sasha Pieterse) exists so when Doc meets with her father (Martin Donovan) at the end, there's history between the two and they don't just kill Sportello. So, yeah, I'm not sure why so many people insist that there's no "there" there, or that the story doesn't make any sense.

 Anyway, I didn't really want this review to just be a defense of the film, because when I sat down to watch it, the negativity hadn't really settled in online. At the time, I didn't know much about it, other than it kind of looked like Paul Thomas Anderson's The Big Lebowski. As the film unfolded, it was pretty clear that it wasn't, that Doc's attitude less resembled The Dude and was much closer to the way that Elliott Gould played Phillip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye. This makes sense insofar as Paul Thomas Anderson has stated that Robert Altman is an influence to him as a filmmaker. Doc wouldn't be like The Dude: he's less befuddled and more playing indifferent, which may be by design or may simply be a side effect of not being sure when he's hallucinating and when he's not. For the record, if Sortilège (Joanna Newsom) is narrating or appears onscreen, he's usually not. If she isn't (for example, the last scene with Bigfoot), there's a chance you might not take everything that happens to be real.

 It took me a little while to get used to that fact, because Doc's laid back attitude tricks you into thinking he's a more reliable main character than he is. As a matter of fact, it makes even more sense for Anderson to expand Sortilège's role and make her the narrator to give us someone more reliable as an anchor at key points in the film. Doc is the focal point, but he's really just another character in his own story, which is why Inherent Vice begins with a shot of Sortilège and then transitions to Shasta in Doc's apartment. What she's saying is, almost verbatim, Pynchon's prose, which Newsom continues to do throughout the film. It's a helpful technique that differentiates Inherent Vice from The Long Goodbye, which drops you in and hopes you can keep up with Gould's even harder to follow mumbled dialogue.

 While I keep going back to The Long Goodbye, a friend of mine feels the film is more strongly linked to Chinatown. Swap out real estate development for water management, and I guess you could make that case, but I think Doc has more agency than Jake Gittes did. He's certainly more in control of his own destiny, and ends up in a happier place by the end, even if the crucial details of the case are totally out of his control - Doc really only helps Coy, and sort of ends up with Shasta again as a byproduct. However, it is better to understand Inherent Vice as a film in the context of those cinematic precedents over an implied connection to the Coen brothers, based mostly on the trailer. Inherent Vice is, quite often, a funny movie, but it's not funny in the same way. Tonally, it's completely different, even if the main character is stoned most of the time. Doc Sportello is not a "slacker" in the same sense that The Dude is, and the grudging respect that Bigfoot has for him (in spite of himself) should clue the audience into that.

 I spent most of Inherent Vice chuckling, at many points because it's not what I thought it was going to be. It's better than that, and despite the apparently rambling narrative, it has a laser focus on what's important. Anderson keeps all of the various characters and seemingly disparate plot threads up in the air with ease, in a way that makes sense when it comes together. It's true that you might need to take some time to digest it, and it wouldn't hurt to read the book, but by no means are you required to. As an adaptation, it boils much of the story down to a useful core, dropping a lot of background detail that help sets up surfer culture in the early 70s in the way that Pynchon could, but that Anderson doesn't have time to. It's the same hazy world that Marlowe was dropped into by Altman (for those of you who haven't seen it, The Long Goodbye the film takes place in the 1970s), with the same kinds of lowlifes looking to make trouble.

 Like Anderson's last film, The Master, I found the performances to be continually engaging. Joaquin Phoenix internalizes most of Doc's mannerisms and reactions, a 180 from his role in The Master (where he played the Id to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Ego). It's sometimes such a laconic performance that you aren't sure when he's genuinely confused and when he's just playing dumb for the client. As much as I enjoyed him, I've found myself leaning towards Brolin's Bigfoot Bjornsen as my favorite role. Bigfoot has the potential to be the most one dimensional character (in the book and the movie), but slowly we realize there's more beneath the surface than "star cop." His phone conversations with Doc are some of the funniest scenes in the film, but also hint at their professional relationship when he's not on duty. The trailer makes a joke out of Bigfoot ordering pancakes at a Japanese restaurant (specifically ordering more in Japanese), but the best part of the scene is when he explains why he eats there. In case you want to see Inherent Vice, I'll let you discover it, but it's a throwaway line that tells you everything you need to know about Bigfoot. Brolin's final scene in the film is... unusual. I choose to chalk it up to Doc hallucinating - it's not in the book the way it happens in the movie - but read it as you will.

 So I know I haven't changed a lot of minds, because this is the internet and well, opinions get entrenched. I still think that Inherent Vice has the chance to grow on people over time, and even if you have to insist it's PTA's "worst" movie, unless you hate all of them, that's not such a bad place to be compared to some of the films I saw this year. I guess 2014 ended up being the year of movies I had to invest a little bit in, to do more work with than the average matinee film. It's been the case with a lot (maybe not all) of the higher end of the recap, and it certainly applies to the last film, which should be coming soon. I can dig it if that's not your thing, and not in a condescending way. I'm not saying that you didn't "get" Inherent Vice, which always reads like an insult that snobs would say, but I am saying that anybody who walked out didn't give it a fair shake. Maybe this will mellow with time. Probably not. Oh well, it's sitting pretty at number two on my list, so it's all good for the Cap'n.

Blogorium Review: Savages

 It hasn't exactly been the best start of the millennium for Oliver Stone. After he pretty much owned late 80s and early 90s until Quentin Tarantino took his throne of "edgy filmmaker" (appropriate considering that Stone took Tarantino's script for Natural Born Killers and changed it to suit the movie he wanted to make), things kind of dropped off. I don't know where you folks stand on U Turn and Any Given Sunday, but I still like them, but it's pretty much the consensus that Stone fell off of the radar and started making movies that were at best "okay" after 2000.

First Stone tried to get in on the "somewhat historical sword and sandal" movement, post-Gladiator (this would include Troy, 300, and also Ridley Scott's other foray, Kingdom of Heaven) to less than desirable results. Alexander is pretty much a mess, and that goes for all three (four?) cuts that are out there - the action heavy / homoerotic removing "Director's Cut," the messy theatrical cut, and the "fuck it, here's a combination of the two" Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut. Honestly, I never saw the "Director's Cut" because it seemed silly to accentuate the action over Alexander the Great's relationships, but I saw the theatrical and final cuts. I guess the last one is the better of the two I saw, but it's no Gladiator, and Gladiator sure isn't Ben-Hur*.

 I never saw World Trade Center and W. was okay but oddly toothless. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps had some pretty good performances but suffered from music choices and visual metaphors that were way to "on the nose." Look, it's cool if you want to cover the financial crisis using Gordon Gekko because in many ways this happened because stock brokers and traders decided to emulate Michael Douglas after Wall Street, but to have someone blow a bubble that floats up over the New York skyline and then bursts, followed by the stock numbers plummeting overlaid on the same skyline is laying it on a bit thick. And I'm being generous here, because people seemed to hate Money Never Sleeps and World Trade Center, while generally well reviewed, always gets forgotten when compared to United 93. And when was the last time you heard anyone mention W.?

 This brings me to Savages, which is being touted as a "return to form" for Stone. For me, a return to form means we're looking at the guy who made Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July and JFK and Nixon and Salvador and Natural Born Killers and even though I don't really like it, The Doors. Because that Oliver Stone was at least interesting. And Savages is not quite that, but it is definitely a better movie than anything Stone's made since 1999 (or, if you really insist that Natural Born Football sucks, then 1994).

 Savages, which is based on Don Winslow's book of the same name (and co-written by Winslow and Stone and Shane Salermo) is the story of O (short for Ophelia, which seems like it should have some significance but only really ties in because there's a painting of the drowned Hamlet character) played by Blake Lively. She narrates the film and pretty much admits that she's going to be unreliable from the get-go because she (SPOILER) tells you a lie by saying "Just because I'm telling you this story doesn't mean I'm alive at the end of it." Unlike other unreliable protagonists (I'm looking at you, non-Batman Christopher Nolan characters), O isn't crazy so much as she isn't very bright. But we'll get to that in a little bit.

 O is dating Chon (Taylor Kitsch), a veteran of Afghanistan and also probably Iraq who came back and started growing and selling weed with Ben (Aaron Johnson), who O is also dating. They have a happy little thing going on and a thriving business with their smuggled in from Afghanistan pot until a Mexican cartel sends them a message, in the form of a video of decapitated folks who said "no" to their business proposition. Ben is more of a zen kind of guy, who spends a lot of time around the world making things better, so he's amenable to making a deal. Chon, on the other hand, is still fixed in a mindset of hostility and sees the cartel trying to make a hostile takeover. He has some buddies he served with who provide security at a distance with sniper rifles keep an eye on their meeting, in case things get nasty.

 The cartel sends Alex (Demian Bechir)to speak on behalf of the boss, Elena (Salma Hayek), and yeah, it's pretty much a "join us or we'll make your lives hell" kind of offer. Ben is hesitant, but Chon really angers Elena by saying "you want us to eat your shit and call it caviar," so things get testy. Elena also has Lado (Benicio del Toro), the muscle, who we meet killing a lawyer named Chad (Shea Wigham cameo) in what you could call a ruthless manner. Lado doesn't like Ben and Chon, so when the order comes down to kidnap O, he makes it his personal mission to keep an eye on her.

 From that point on, the movie gets more interesting, which is not to say it wasn't before. It's just that if that were my entire review I could have skipped the movie and just recapped the trailer. The trailer sells it as just a kidnapping movie and that Ben and Chon are going to get her back and escalate the violence, Taken-style or something to that effect. But that's not really what happens in Savages.

 Instead, the film takes some time to breathe and lets the characters get to know each other a little better. We get to know Ben and Chon more, which is good because otherwise it would be easier to characterize the film as "John Carter  and Kick-Ass vs. Frida and The Wolf Man." Also, Elena gets to know O, in part because her own daughter Magda (Sandra Echeverría) doesn't want to have anything to do with her. In an interesting wrinkle, we first meet Magda while she's on the phone with her mother, shopping in the same mall O is about to be kidnapped from. Stone could have laid it on thick there but mostly the parallels between the two young women is kept in the background.

 Also, I haven't mentioned sleazy DEA Agent Dennis, played by John Travolta. It's been a while since I've seen Travolta in anything, so I forgot just how good he can be in movies and not just as tabloid fodder. Here he's great as a corrupt agent playing more than one side, simultaneously feeding Ben and Chon information while plotting across the border in order to keep his pockets lined and his ass out of the line of fire. While ethically dubious I have to say I admire his ability to avoid the same fate as Chad on more than one occasion.

 Stylistically I guess you could say that Savages is a little closer to the Oliver Stone of Natural Born Killers, but it's nowhere near as wild as that movie. Yes, sometimes it switches to black and white or goes slightly slow motion, and there's the juxtaposition of classical music with graphic violence, but more or less the film is told in a straightforward fashion. Where it's closer to Natural Born Killers is in the violence, where Savages really just does not hold back. There's a scene where Lado whips a guy until his eyeball pops out, and then the eye just hangs there for the rest of the scene until the mole is douse with gasoline, place inside of a tire, and then set ablaze by Ben (at Elena's bidding). It's not a sensationalized violence so much as the kind that makes you cringe a little, like when Lado blows off Chad's kneecaps (this would be more of a spoiler but Chad dies in the same scene we meet him early in the film).

 So Savages is an entertaining, if violent movie. I like that both sides make their case about how the title applies to the other (again, not in a heavy handed way. I feel that's necessary after Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), and while I was expecting to enjoy the supporting cast I did end up liking Kitsch and Johnson and Lively as well. Good job, Oliver Stone - I did not see that coming. I also liked the smaller roles / cameos in the movie, like Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) as Ben and Chon's money launderer, Leonard Roberts (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes) as O's security guy Hayes, and Joel David Moore** as a computer programmer who I don't think ever says anything in the film but you see him two or three times.

 But as much as I'd like to close things out like that, I do feel like I should pull a switcheroo just like the ending of Savages. Well, I should say "endings" because there's a climactic shootout during a hostage exchange where pretty much everybody dies and then O says "that's how I imagined it would happen, anyway" and then abruptly jumps back to explain what DID happen, which makes more sense considering we had already seen the formulation of the plan earlier in the movie. It is kind of a cop-out, not only because Stone (and Winslow and Salermo) give you the emotionally satisfying conclusion you were probably expecting in its entirety only to pull the rug out, but also because it feels like they couldn't make up their minds.

 Yes, O is unreliable and you set that up early on but if we're really going by that then how could we possibly have seen the conversation that sets up the actual ending of the movie? No one she communicates with was privy to it. I just took it that O was narrating parts of the movie but after a while the movie took over and we're just seeing the narrative presented to us not as O saw it but as it was unfolding. She can't possibly know half of the things we see, so you just get over the structure of film as flashback.

 Anyway, so it's like they had two endings, couldn't decide which one they liked more (the "movie" ending or the "appropriate for the world of this movie" ending), so they decided to use both. And it detracts a little bit, especially when it goes on to these ambiguous statements about what happened afterward and what living like a "savage" means and O waxing the philosophical. It's not enough to derail Savages, but I have to say that the movie doesn't quite stick the landing. Otherwise I had fun watching it, cringed a little bit at the cruelty, and enjoyed the acting and direction. This is the kind of Oliver Stone I could get used to watching again - maybe not at the top of his game, but still making interesting movies that don't hold back so much.


 * Fair? Maybe not, but it's hard to argue that this wave of historical "epics" doesn't in some fashion borrow heavily from Ben-Hur or Spartacus or Demetrius and the Gladiators.
** I guess most of you would say from Avatar, but since I haven't seen Avatar he's "Hatchet's Joel David Moore" to me.

I Always Forget One...

Without fail, every time the Cap'n does a Year End Recap, I forget one movie that subsequently sticks out like a sore thumb. It was nearly Whatever Works, but I managed to sneak it in at the last second while working on the "Favorites". Astute readers have pointed out to me that I did completely forget about Taken, which was something we watched in lieu of a Doctor Who party earlier this year. I could use my "get out of jail free" card and point out that the rest of the world had Taken in 2008 (which prevented JCVD from making it onto the list), but since it was technically released here in January, I forgot it. Whoops.

For those curious, Taken would have fallen into the "Honorable Mentions" category. It's a breezy movie, one punctuated with some jarring violence, but not the sort of film that transcends "good action movie". It's more Lethal Weapon 2 than Leon. No offense intended.

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I'm not going to make a big deal of this, because the guy is a) an idiot, or b) some kind of comedy mastermind looking to take me down a peg, but "Grampa J" is at it again with his 2009 Best Of. I haven't laughed that hard in a while, so I recommend you scuttle on over to his blog, whoever he is, and take a gander for yourself. Any list that includes District 9, The Ugly Truth, Avatar, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop is one worth a chuckle.

Don't tell him I sent you. I don't want this dude getting any ideas.

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Coming tomorrow is a review for It Might Get Loud, the rock guitarist documentary from Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). If you haven't heard of the film, the basic idea is to get Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page together in a room and let them play. I suppose they also talk about their influences, etc, but the word on It Might Get Loud is very good.

So I can include the "Damn You Hippies" tag on this post, I watched Gimme Shelter last night, and those hippies got what was coming to them. I can just imagine Eric Cartman watching the Altamont footage and seething with anger.

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Finally, I'll briefly touch upon the Blu Ray release of Chasing Amy. I'm not really a fan of the film, so this is mostly about the supplements, which included two things I really wanted to check out: 1) a "12 years later" discussion between Kevin Smith and Joey Lauren Adams, who were an item prior to, during, and shortly after the film came to be. The conversation is interesting, but the first half is mostly dominated by Smith recounting how the couple came to be. Adams has some interesting comments towards the end about the problems she's had in Hollywood getting past the "girlfriend" role with casting directors.

2) was the SModcast commentary that replaces the Criterion laserdisc track (which famously began with Smith pronouncing "Fuck DVD!"). The new commentary track is, in fact, just another SModcast (part of Smith and Scott Mosier's long running podcasts), except that you'd have to pay roughly $30-40 to get it (the rest are free). They claim it to be a "technical" track, which is partially true, but more often than not it's like most SModcasts: they digress, laugh wildly at silly moments, and come up with crazy ideas.

The two that stand out the most involve an earlier version of the film that theoretically could have been called "Ass is Pussy", and Smith's idea to make a Chasing Amy Take Two with the entire cast twenty years later. Rather than a follow-up, he expresses an interest in simply shooting the same script with the same cast, but in the hopes his skills as a director have improved enough to do it justice.

For the record, I didn't watch the actual movie with its actual soundtrack, so I can't really give you a revisited opinion, but it did look much better than the Criterion dvd, and considerably better than the Clerks Blu-Ray. There's also a nice 80 minute documentary about the film with all the principle cast and crew, producers, Miramax execs, and critics involved, and a 10th Anniversary Q&A where Ben Affleck cuts loose again. I can't imagine Smith fans not picking this up, so it scarcely requires the Cap'n to recommend it.

What a misleading trailer!

As the Cap'n likes to drop knowledge as often and as accurately as possible, allow me to present the actual plot of Teenage Mother, from the Amazon dvd listing:

TEENAGE MOTHER

High schoolers learn a lot about the facts of life from the new Swedish sex-ed teacher. She is nearly raped by drug-dealing students and one ingenious, manipulative girl uses the new knowledge to feign pregnancy so she can con her boy friend into marrying her.

Sneaky, Mr. Unfortunately Voiced Narrator Guy (TEENAGE MUTHA!): you tricked us into thinking the movie was just about Arlene Sue and that afterward that German Swedish sex-ed instructor would be visiting us in person. I had no idea this movie would be so *gasp* scandalous! We came to see Teenage Mother, not Class of 1984, after all*.

However, this does raise questions about what happens after the "whole gang got even" one night. Maybe it wasn't that she tricked the guy and turned "brother against brother", but her slutty ways with the truck driver just pushed him over the edge. Or something. Now I'm all messed up about Teenage Mother ("means nine months of trouble!"), because of the wildly inaccurate advertising campaign.


For shame, Voiceover Guy. For shame.



* admittedly, all of these revelations do make the film more interesting than I thought it would be...

"It's like he's just reading the new release list!"

I'm not sure how any of you could be reading this when you all now have the option to be watching The State on dvd. If I had the choice, it would be a no-brainer. On one hand, you have Cap'n Howdy, and on the other the comedy troupe ultimately responsible for Wet Hot American Summer, Reno 911, Stella, Viva Variety, The Ten, The Baxter, and Role Models. Oh, and that new show where Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter have issues or something. Seems pretty clear where I'm sitting. In fact, why am I writing this when I could be watching The State?

Or I could watch [REC], the movie Quarantine is based on and by most accounts is light years better than. I didn't think Quarantine was awful but the presence of character actors I recognized immediately didn't help maintain suspense. Instead it was more of a "Hey, it's Dexter's sister! And oh look, the dude from Allie McBeal!" Not a great way to draw someone into a horror movie. [REC], on the other hand, is in Spanish and features actors I don't exactly recognize, so I will have less trouble suspending disbelief watching Apartment of Zombies (spoiler).

Spine numbered-inclined blu-heads will be happy to hear that Criterion was watching out for you on the anniversary of the moon landing and rereleased For All Mankind on dvd and fancy-schmancy dvd with some... I dunno. I gave my old version to my dad years ago because he's a huge NASA geek and I can't honestly tell you what's different. The documentary itself, which is twenty years old, is about all of the Apollo missions with the involvment of all Apollo astronauts. Pretty cool.

There are now almost twenty blu-spine numbers*, so you early adopter Criterions fans better get on it!

If you're a Martin Scorsese completist, or just a fan of hippie bullcrap, don't forget that Woodstock is out on dvd and blu ray. If you buy the dvd at Target, you get a free tambourine, which I guess you can use when you and your bullshit hippie friends get high and pretend it's the sixties again, which is what every idiot hippie I went to high school with did just about every weekend. I guess you can tell that I got it for the Scorsese and some of the music, because the Cap'n is definitely with Eric Cartman when it comes to hippies. That's why I listen to Slayer.

I also listen to Slayer because Slayer kicked ass until they didn't anymore.

I need a place to live. Soon.

* For those curious, the Criterion Blu Rays are: The 400 Blows, The Seventh Seal, The Wages of Fear, For All Mankind, The Third Man, Playtime, The Complete Monterey Pop Festival, Kagemusha, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Pierrot le Fout, The Last Emperor, Bottle Rocket, Chungking Express, El Norte, The Last Metro, In the Realm of the Senses, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Last Year at Marienbad, and Repulsion.