Curator Watchlist
A shaggy, stoned neo-noir that trades clean plotting for atmosphere, jokes, and melancholy. It’s messy by design, but the mood, performances, and period texture make it a rewarding watch for viewers who like their mysteries hazy and their comedies deadpan.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 2h 29m
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson
In Los Angeles at the turn of the 1970s, drug-fueled detective Larry "Doc" Sportello investigates the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson
A shaggy, stoned neo-noir that trades clean plotting for atmosphere, jokes, and melancholy. It’s messy by design, but the mood, performances, and period texture make it a rewarding watch for viewers who like their mysteries hazy and their comedies deadpan.
Paul Thomas Anderson turns Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinth into a sun-bleached hangout noir, where the pleasure is less in solving the case than in drifting through the wreckage of a culture on the turn. The movie is funny, mournful, and deliberately untidy, with Joaquin Phoenix giving Doc Sportello a beautifully dazed physical comedy that keeps the film buoyant even when the conspiracy fog thickens.
What makes it stick is the feeling of a world slipping away: the end of the 1960s, the collapse of idealism, and the way private confusion mirrors public rot. Anderson doesn’t simplify the material; he lets the movie stay slippery, which can be frustrating if you want a conventional detective payoff, but exhilarating if you’re tuned to mood, texture, and implication.
It’s one of those films that can feel like a joke on first pass and a lament on the second. The ensemble is rich, the soundtrack is hypnotic, and the whole thing plays like a cracked postcard from a country that has already started lying to itself.
Matt Singer (3.5★) · 6181 likes
Every ticket to INHERENT VICE should come with the choice of a joint or a second ticket to INHERENT VICE. You will need one or the other.
Chris 🍉 (4.5★) · 2952 likes
paul thomas anderson: *points his camera at absolute nonsense for 148 minutes* me: OOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
maria (3.5★) · 2389 likes
as rick dalton in once upon a time in hollywood so eloquently and masterfully said "dirty fucking hippies"
Roy Wonderboy (4★) · 2075 likes
A detective film that doesn't give two shits about the mystery. I love it.
SilentDawn (5★) · 1780 likes
"It's not groovy to be insane." Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is a force to be reckoned with. It's a shimmering and paranoiac masterwork that bubbles with a sustained sense of wistful loss and slowly-fading hopefulness. Masquerading as a neo-noir of convoluted and increasingly tense situations, PTA's film instead uses the complex story-line as a framework for a time and place that is both lost but constantly remembered. Combined with a delightful ensemble cast, typical PTA visual/aural nirvana, and a… more
A comic detective drift through a conspiracy that matters less than the vibe, with deadpan humor and shaggy momentum.
A quintessential hangout noir that turns a private-eye story into a portrait of disillusionment and cultural drift.
For the sunlit Los Angeles corruption, noir fatalism, and the sense of a city becoming a machine for betrayal.
A modern LA paranoia spiral that treats clues, symbols, and conspiracies as part of a larger cultural fever dream.
A breezy, funny detective caper with period texture, chemistry, and a willingness to let the mystery get gloriously weird.
If the appeal is dark comedy mixed with melancholy and offbeat character rhythms, this hits a similar sweet spot.
Another Anderson film that pairs psychological drift with precise craft and a deep unease beneath the surface.
For the same blend of romantic yearning, comic discomfort, and sudden emotional vulnerability.
An ensemble of damaged people moving through a charged, sprawling world where coincidence and fate feel equally absurd.
A paranoid character study about surveillance, guilt, and the way uncertainty corrodes the self.
A procedural that becomes an obsession, with atmosphere and ambiguity doing as much work as the investigation.
For the gritty early-1970s urban texture and a detective story that feels morally contaminated from the start.
counterculture decay, paranoia, lost idealism, neo-noir, private investigation, drug haze, institutional corruption, nostalgia and memory
neo-noir, mystery-comedy, counterculture, paranoia, 1970s, stoner humor, ensemble cast, LA noir, melancholy, conspiracy