2. Inherent Vice
The Coen brothers demonstrated their willingness to cast aside narrative coherence in The Big Lebowski - Paul Thomas Anderson takes us several steps closer to the obliqueness of The Big Sleep with Inherent Vice, his adaptation of the novel of the same name by Thomas Pynchon. Joaquim Phoenix stars as Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private dick with a penchant for spliffs who finds himself embroiled in multiple overlapping investigations in which the increasingly tangled strands wrap themselves around him. Being Pynchon, the mystery Sportello tries to unravel is only half the point - examining the time, the place and the weird and wonderful people are just as much the central point. With a lengthy running time and lots of talkative scenes shot without Anderson's usual visual flair, it's easy to see why some were disappointed with Inherent Vice. But while it's not his greatest movie there's a lot of fun to be had in soaking up the performances which float in and out of the film as Sportello's investigation trundles aimlessly along.