Maverick "Artsy" Film-Maker Paul Thomas Anderson has Hit and Missed with His "Personal" Filmography that is Ripe with a Repertoire of Repulsive, or at Least Against the Grain of "Typical", Audience Friendly Subject Matter and Characters.
His Most Highly Acclaimed Movies Like "The Master" (2012), "There Will Be Blood" (2007), and Boogie Nights (1997) can be a "Chore" for the Average Movie-Fan.
Professional Critics, on the Other-Hand, Mostly Love His Off-Beat, Daring Displays, and Technical Artistry, that Makes His Movies "Apart" from Others in the Main-Stream.
"Inherent Vice" is a Neo-Noir, Drug-Soaked-Detective-Dark-Comedy that is Nothing if Not a Challenge to Watch and Get-Through.
The Story is Scattershot, Frustrating Most of the Time, with Unpleasant Characters that All seem to Whisper and Mumble Their Lines.
One Guesses This is to Represent a "Smokey-Stoned-Haze", but it Makes the Hard-to-Follow Story even More Hard-to-Follow and Track What the Hell is Going On.
The Self-Assured Anderson is, No Doubt, Aware of All the Negative Push-Back and Mediocre Reviews, but One Senses that This WAS His Vision.
It is Sort of a Wallow and a Badge of Honor for Fringe Directors Like Altman and Lynch that Set-Out to be Unconventional.
And Sometimes, Like Anderson and those Others, Score Big-Time.
But Other Times, It's More an Endurance Test than it is Entertaining for the Audience and Renders All the "Art-Work" Close to Unapproachable, So-So, and Brushed-Aside by Many.
The Cast is an A-List-Wet-Dream, the Cinematography and Sense of Time-Place is Spot-On.
But, the Movie is Based on Another Eccentric... Novelist Thomas Pynchon, One of Those Writers whose Work is Often Cited as "Novels That Are Unfilmable", and in This Case it Seems an Accurate Description.
For Fans of the Unusual, Weird, and Psychotronic, it is...
Worth a Watch
For Others...Maybe Not.
His Most Highly Acclaimed Movies Like "The Master" (2012), "There Will Be Blood" (2007), and Boogie Nights (1997) can be a "Chore" for the Average Movie-Fan.
Professional Critics, on the Other-Hand, Mostly Love His Off-Beat, Daring Displays, and Technical Artistry, that Makes His Movies "Apart" from Others in the Main-Stream.
"Inherent Vice" is a Neo-Noir, Drug-Soaked-Detective-Dark-Comedy that is Nothing if Not a Challenge to Watch and Get-Through.
The Story is Scattershot, Frustrating Most of the Time, with Unpleasant Characters that All seem to Whisper and Mumble Their Lines.
One Guesses This is to Represent a "Smokey-Stoned-Haze", but it Makes the Hard-to-Follow Story even More Hard-to-Follow and Track What the Hell is Going On.
The Self-Assured Anderson is, No Doubt, Aware of All the Negative Push-Back and Mediocre Reviews, but One Senses that This WAS His Vision.
It is Sort of a Wallow and a Badge of Honor for Fringe Directors Like Altman and Lynch that Set-Out to be Unconventional.
And Sometimes, Like Anderson and those Others, Score Big-Time.
But Other Times, It's More an Endurance Test than it is Entertaining for the Audience and Renders All the "Art-Work" Close to Unapproachable, So-So, and Brushed-Aside by Many.
The Cast is an A-List-Wet-Dream, the Cinematography and Sense of Time-Place is Spot-On.
But, the Movie is Based on Another Eccentric... Novelist Thomas Pynchon, One of Those Writers whose Work is Often Cited as "Novels That Are Unfilmable", and in This Case it Seems an Accurate Description.
For Fans of the Unusual, Weird, and Psychotronic, it is...
Worth a Watch
For Others...Maybe Not.
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