L.A. Noir: Inherent Vice

L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise

Presented by Greg Olson Productions

Always in the vanguard, New/Old Hollywood director Paul Thomas Anderson made The Phantom Thread (2017) in England, but otherwise his personal and cinematic turf has been Los Angeles and its environs in Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Licorice Pizza. And here we have the Gordita Beach town of Thomas Pynchon’s delightfully dense Inherent Vice novel. Pynchon and Anderson waft us back to the late 1960s-early 1970s like no one else can: ride the vibes. Smoking a joint helps charmingly semi-focused detective Doc Sportello (a transcendent Joaquin Phoenix) see all the dimensions of a case. Of course Doc’s office is in a medical clinic; we’re in Pynchon’s brilliant, satirical universe here, where beauty, menace, absurdity, heart and soul mix it up minute to minute. One night Doc’s former girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) comes to him. Where’s she been, why’s she afraid, where did she go in that big black Cadillac? As Doc embarks on a steps-forward/steps-backward quest to solve her mysteries, he encounters the sinister Golden Fang organization, a presumed-dead sax player (Owen Wilson), a trippy carnival of SoCal human wildlife, and his nemesis/friend/sparring partner policeman Bigfoot (a stellar James Brolin). Doc’s counterculture values and ways are mocked and attacked, but he rides them like a heartfelt wave. Features a glorious passage of Neil Young’s music. With Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, Benicio del Toro.

Individual Tickets: $15
Passes: $109 | $91 SIFF SAM, Swedish Club, UW Cinema Studies, NWFF, SFI, TheFilmSchool, Festa Italiana, Alliance Francaise de Seattle, Scarecrow Video, & KING FM members