Inherent Vice (2014)

I feel like every once in a while I read some article about Paul Thomas Anderson that seems it to take for granted that Inherent Vice was at least a misstep if not an outright unwatchable mess. But this is my third favorite PTA (behind Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, but ahead of One Battle After Another—which I liked a lot!—and way, way ahead of Magnolia, which seems to get a lot more critical love but which I find just too relentlessly downbeat and depressing to take). This is not a movie you go to for a tidy, clearly structured plot or dramatic realism; for me it's about the drugged-out, paranoia-in-the-bright-Southern-California-sunshine vibe of it, the sense that there are big things going on around you all the time that you can’t quite grasp or have any control over.