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The Absurdist Spacecraft of ‘Inherent Vice’

December 12, 2014 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

If “The Big Lebowski” is the ultimate movie about stoners, “Inherent Vice” is the ultimate stoned movie. It’s nearly impossible to watch this surprisingly faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel without feeling high ourselves. But dig it, man: Resistance to the film’s addled charms is futile. This is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s most lavishly light-footed work since 1997’s “Boogie Nights.”

Joaquin Phoenix is Doc Sportello, a private eye with a heart of Hawaiian Gold, and it’s a role he was born to play (though Joaquin seems born to play every one of his roles, doesn’t he?). Decked out in John Lennon shades and muttonchops to make the Founding Fathers weep, waddling in a pelvis-first slouch with feet splayed in Huaraches, mumbling in a drug-fueled burr, scribbling inanities like NOT hallucinating in his reporter’s notebook, and forever “rooting through the city dump that is his memory,” Doc is the love child of Doctor Teeth and 1960s-era Elliott Gould whom we didn’t know we were seeking. He doesn’t really know who he’s seeking, either – which, though an admittedly odd quality in a detective, is perfectly in keeping with this shaggy spaceship of a mystery. Continue Reading →

Oates (and ‘Boyhood’) for Lunch

December 11, 2014 in Book Matters, Film Matters

Without a doubt, the headline news at an early December “Boyhood” luncheon at NYC’s Lotos Club was the New York Film Critics Circle Awards that the film won minutes into the event. As attendees swilled cocktails, the announcement came that Patricia Arquette had won Best Supporting Actress, Richard Linklater had won Best Director, and the film had nabbed Best Picture honors, confirming the coming-of-age drama’s position as this year’s Oscar frontrunner. But for some attendees of the event – including “Boyhood” star Ethan Hawke – the biggest news was author Joyce Carol Oates, who moderated a discussion with the film’s cast and director.

As Oates, Hawke, Linklater, Arquette, and costar Ellar Coltrane settled into folding chairs, Hawke, a published novelist himself, burst out, “It’s such an honor to sit with you.” (Several film journalists looked befuddled about the National Book Prize winner’s identity.) Oates, clad in her standard uniform of demure, dark garments, smiled quickly and dove into a discussion of the film, which was shot over the course of twelve years. Continue Reading →

The Alchemy of ‘Still Alice’

December 7, 2014 in Book Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

Without Julianne Moore, “Still Alice” might not be much of a film. This is not to say the adaptation of Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel about a fifty-year-old woman stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is otherwise mediocre, although it is so unobtrusively constructed that its virtues may be overlooked. But because it focuses on the perspective of a person with Alzheimer’s rather than on the perspective of her caregivers, a uniquely gifted actor is required in the titular role. Who but Moore, with her radiant fusion of fortitude and empathy, could soldier us through a narrative whose unhappy ending is as inevitable as that of the Titanic?

Initially, Alice Howland seems like she has it all. A celebrated Columbia University linguistics professor, she is happily married to fellow academic John (an unusually muted Alec Baldwin), and the couple enjoy their three grown children as well as their well-appointed Long Island beach house and NYC brownstone. If she is a tad thorny when things don’t go her way – her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actor, bears the brunt of her mother’s tenacity – it’s nothing extraordinary in a modern Type A woman. But when Alice can no longer write off her memory loss and growing confusion as mere middle-aged malaise (read: menopause side effects), her worst fears are outstripped: She is diagnosed with a rare strain of Alzheimer’s that is inherited and can be transmitted. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps, and although some might take umbrage with her disease comparison-shopping, we understand what she means. Especially in her line of work, she does not know who she will be without her formidable brain. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy