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X This Week maltatoday, Sunday, 22 March 2015 IN CINEMAS TODAY St James Cavalier Valletta Tel. 21 223200 NT Live presents: Behind the Beautiful Forevers (12) 18:30 Embassy Cinemas Valletta Tel. 21 227436, 21 245818 Run all Night (15) 10:30, 13:45, 16:15, 18:45, 21:15 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (PG) 10:15, 13:20, 16:05, 18:35, 21:05 Focus (15) 20:50 Kingsman: The Secret Service (12) 10:00, 15:50, 18:35, 21:15 Fifty Shades of Grey (18) 10:30, 16:00, 18:45, 21:15 The Boy Next Door (15) 10:00, 12:15, 14:30, 16:45, 19:00, 21:15 Shaun the Sheep (U) 10:00, 12:10, 14:20, 16:30, 18:40 Eden Cinemas St Julian's Tel. 23 710400 Run All Night (15) 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:45 Hyena (18) 14:00, 16:20, 18:40, 21:05, 23:35 Suite Francaise (15) 14:05, 16:20, 18:45, 21:20, 23:40 Il-Klikka The Film (15) 14:10, 16:30, 18:50, 21:15, 23:35 Kingsman: The Secret Service (12) 14:25, 18:05, 20:45, 23:25 Fifty Shades of Grey (18) 14:30, 18:15, 21:00, 23:40 Focus (15) 14:05, 16:20, 18:45, 21:10, 23:30 The Wedding Ringer (15) 14:05, 16:15, 18:30, 20:55, 23:15 Son of a Gun (15) 14:05, 16:25, 18:45, 21:05, 23:25 The Boy Next Door (15) 14:10, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:20 Shaun the Sheep (U) 14:20, 16:30, 18:40, 20:45, 22:50 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (PG) 14:30, 18:20, 20:55, 23:30 Inherent Vice (18) 14:30, 18:00, 21:00 Empire Cinemas Bugibba Tel. 21 581787, 21 581909 Kingsman: The Secret Service (12) 20:45, 23:25 Fifty Shades of Grey (18) 10:45, 13:20, 15:55, 18:30, 21:05, 23:40 Focus (15) 11:00, 13:50, 16:05, 18:25, 21:00, 23:15 The Second Best Marigold Hotel (PG) 10:55, 13:30, 16:00, 18:30, 21:05, 23:35 Shaun the Sheep (U) 11:10, 13:25, 15:40, 17:55 The Boy Next Door (12) 10:55, 13:40, 16:00, 18:10, 20:55, 23:00 Suite Francais (15) 11:05, 13:35, 15:55, 18:15, 20:45, 23:05 Run All Night (15) 11:00, 13:30, 15:55, 18:20, 20:50, 23:15 America is a funny place. A capitalist promised land that despite recent economic upheavals remains the soft-superpower of the Western world to this day, its origins are bound to be a neurotic mix of utopian ambition and institution- alised oppression. Its film industry sometimes gets around to criti- quing its historical anatomy: more recently, see 12 Years a Slave and Zero Dark Thirty. But Paul Thomas Anderson is arguably the go-to filmmaker when it comes to intense and psychologically involving mini- epics on America's psyche. They're synecdoches – snapshots that reveal the country's inner workings. From Daniel Day Lewis's self-made oil magnate Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) – a vampiric presence prefiguring the rise of capi- talism – to the unexpectedly tender exploration of self-made religions in The Master (2012), Anderson now swerves back into a milieu he explored in his breakthrough Boogie Nights (1997), albeit with an entirely different lens, and working from a novel by that other explorer of the mad-and-maddening American continent, the enigmatic Thomas Pynchon. Set during the hazy tail end of 60s America, Inherent Vice begins in a shanty beach house in Gordita Beach, California, where Private Investigator Larry 'Doc' Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is visited by his former flame Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston). As if his fre- quent drug use hasn't left him feeling disoriented enough, Doc indulges Shasta's plea for help. But it's a bit of a mind-bending affair in and of itself: her current boyfriend, the real estate magnate Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), is apparently being set up to be carted away into a mental hospital by his wife and her own lover. But the second Doc wades into the case, things get complicated. Em- ploying the occasional and reluctant (for both sides) help of police hard- man and sometime actor Christian 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), Doc stumbles across one eccentric character after another, all of whom appear to have a connection to the kidnapping attempt in question – a kidnapping attempt that grows more ambitious with each passing day. But though these connections are slip- pery, they appear to have a common denominator: the sinister organisa- tion going by the name 'Golden Fang'… Inherent Vice delivers on its prom- ise to faithfully adapt Pynchon's sprawling detective noir pastiche, which contains an embedded ambi- tion to also depict the 'free love' 60s and 70s as they were lived, not as they were romanticised by subse- quent generations of storytellers. But this does not mean that we're getting a comfortable 'slice of life' story about what life could have been back then, and neither is the story free from flourish and stylisation. A hallmark of Pynchon's postmodern novels is their very rejection of real- ism in favour of a screwball comedy approach to its otherwise puzzle- like plots and weighty intellectual subjects. Bearing out the reclusive author's obsession with conspiracy theories and the dizzying intercon- nectivity of modern life (as enabled to a feverish degree by corporations and the various media), 'Vice' is also positioned nicely as a detective noir pastiche, making good on that genre's predilection for rambling stories populated by eccentrics. So thankfully, this isn't Pynchon re-packaged as a slim-and-trim Hollywood-friendly noir. Which is good news for some, and bad news for others: it means things move at a slower pace… certainly a slower pace than what's expected of today's con- temporary blockbusters. But it's a joy to savour. Joaquin Phoenix continues to bring his A-game, playing Doc with the adequate air of bemusement and lazy compassion. But he's aided by an ensemble cast too large to list, and while Josh Brolin is a frequent and amusing presence in this gal- lery of spirited grotesques, it's the female characters that come forward most strongly. Katherine Water- ston convinces as the wounded but dangerous femme fatale crossed with girl who got away, and looms large as she continues to haunt Doc on his journey. But a brief appear- ance by Jena Malone proves to be the film's emotional centre. An ex-junkie mother forced to don a fake set of 'chompers' to amend drug-induced dental atrophy, she's a stark reminder of the dark underbelly that we often ignore when we consider this legen- darily bohemian time period. Inherent Vice will be showing at St James Cavalier Cinema, Valletta on March 21 at 15:00, March 27 and April 11 at 20:00 By Teodor Reljic Don't know much about history… ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ VICE ★ ★ ★ ★ NICE ★ ★ ★ SUFFICE ★ ★ EXCISE ★ LICE INHERENT VICE (15) ★ ★ ★ ★ FILM www.gourmettoday.recipes Through a haze darkly: Joaquin Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon stew their nerves in the contradictory 'paranoid chill' that characterises Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's cult novel