Went through very unofficial channels to see this one, but I’m glad I didn’t leave the house or cough up the cash because Inherent Vice isn’t worth it:
Adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is Chinatown in the gonzo sensibility of the Coen brothers or Terry Gilliam, except it’s a Paul Thomas Anderson film so it’s a million hours long, overly enamoured with its talkiness as it meanders from scene to scene, with an unnecessarily unwieldy cast to boot.
Also reblogged from my Letterboxd list is Somewhere Between:
Film producer Linda Goldstein Knowlton turns her hand to directing with this documentary following a number of teenage girls who were adopted from China to the US as young children, and shows how their experience between cultures drives them in various ways, whether in reaching out to fellow adoptees for a greater understanding or striving to learn more about their origins. It’s nothing groundbreaking in terms of filmmaking, but the girls’ stories are real and heartfelt, and its agenda, if it has one, is quietly challenging.
And I caught Oscar contender Wild thanks to the wonders of you-know-what:
It could have been an awful mawkish self-help travelogue in the same vein as Eat Pray Love or that salmon fishing one. And thankfully director Jean-Marc Vallée saves it from those depths by letting the scenery speak for itself, and telling the story of Cheryl Strayed’s epic hike mostly through flashback, though it does slip into cod spiritual meaning-of-life bullshit in the final stretch. Still, in the lead role, Reese Witherspoon is her best yet as she carries the weight of the world on her back.