Not everyone loved Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice - that much is clear from the dismal box office takings (that's probably the last time Anderson and Warner Bros. will be working together for a while). Still, this 1970-set, stoner detective oddity had one element probably every viewer could agree on all the same: as Doc Sportello, Joaquin Phoenix proves he's on one hell of a roll. Like a younger version of The Big Lebowski's The Dude before he decided to just stop working altogether, Inherent Vice's Doc Sportello is the noir antihero reimagined as a bumbling private eye - with an afro, occasionally - and Phoenix plays it like he's never had so much fun. Mutton-chopped, constantly trailed by a marijuana fog, pretty regularly confused, this is Joaquin Phoenix's masterpiece of comedy. Tragedy, too - Inherent Vice is melancholic throughout, but it never gets sadder than when Sportello sees sparring partner Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) eat a face-full of hash in a moment of madness, prompting tears to stream down Phoenix's face, as his harmless hippie in that moment sees the '60s counterculture die before him.