Double Bill Mini Musings: Troubled Grooves and Opening Night Jitters...

Inherent Vice:
What's it about?
A complex tale situated at the death of the 1960s in and around the fictional seaside L.A. area of Gordita Beach, in which Private Investigator Larry "Doc" Sportello becomes involved in a twisted, sprawling string of crimes including, but not limited to, kidnap, murder, fraud, and drug trafficking. Based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon.
Who would I recognise in it?
Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, and more.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Not quite Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson's best, but pretty close. Read the book and then watch the film for the best viewing experience. Don't try to unwind every mystery and understand every event - that's not the point - indeed, as Anderson himself said, the best thing to do is just let the movie wash over you. It's more about an atmosphere and an experience, than a neatly tied-up story. Even with some nips and tucks moving from book to film (the whole Vegas angle is reduced to a brief newspaper headline, various side characters' parts are reduced or removed, etc) Anderson manages to remain strikingly true to the source material, so much so that - at times - the film feels more like a book than it does a movie. The pacing and rhythms are different to your usual film, while Pynchon's world is beautifully recreated - cannily helped by deploying the side character of Sortilege as the narrator. Undoubtedly it's a divisive film, but it is one that will find its audience in the home viewing market, where it will reveal deeper layers with repeated viewings. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for Elijah Wood tinkling the ivories...

Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2013) Review

In the last decade there has been a veritable monsoon of horror movie remakes, and while familiar names both large and small underwent the 're-imagining' process (to widely varying degrees of success), William Lustig's notoriously nasty Maniac (1980), slid under the radar – until now.

“Leave her alone!” Written and produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (worthwhile remakes of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006, and Piranha in 2010), with Lustig on-board, and Franck Khalfoun (the utterly dreadful and menace-free P2) in the Director's chair, it was a real toss-up how this one could turn out. Would it be a pointless exercise in thoughtless money-making (akin to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010), or would it be a fresh and worthy new spin on familiar material that is held dear as a dark and sinister example of the slasher genre at its best?

Click “READ MORE” below to find out which, and to see more screenshots...