#The 11 Greatest Paul Thomas Anderson Scenes

“Inherent Vice” is a ’70s-set neo-noir, and could be Anderson’s most impenetrable and divisive film. It has another one of Anderson’s typically great ensembles — this one includes Katherine Waterston, Benicio del Toro, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Martin Short. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc, a private detective who shares several wildly funny scenes with Josh Brolin’s Bigfoot, an LAPD detective who is Doc’s opposite in every way. Doc is a long-haired hippie. Bigfoot has a ’60s buzzcut. One of them lives firmly in the past, while the other is much more with the times. 

Two of the characters’ funniest shared scenes involve food (a tool Anderson often uses to demonstrate a character’s whims and foibles) and, while brief, certainly leave an impression. One is a wordless scene in a shared car, where Bigfoot eats a frozen banana as a horrified Doc looks on, with Phoenix doing some brilliant mugging. Brolin gagging on the banana for a split-second is particularly good.

In the second, they meet in a Japanese coffee shop, where Bigfoot keeps demanding “motto panukeiku” — or “more pancakes” — from a poor unseen chef while, once again, Doc watches in despair. Both of these brief vignettes let us into the depths of Bigfoot’s obnoxious personality and reveal why everything about him rubs Doc the wrong way. For a while, “Inherent Vice” was Anderson’s funniest film — but then he made the best comedy of the decade in 2017.