Coming this week

Coming this week

By Steven Rea

Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson is the brave and reverent - and very first - director to take a Thomas Pynchon novel to the big screen, adapting the author's cannabis-infused 2009 work, set in 1970 Los Angeles, and turning it into a suitably trippy shaggy-dog mystery, as if Raymond Chandler and Cheech and Chong had sat down together for a toke. Joaquin Phoenix stars. R

Mr. Turner The great British painter J.M.W. Turner in the last quarter of his life, as realized by Timothy Spall, who won the best-actor prize at Cannes for his trouble. Mike Leigh directs, and Dick Pope shoots as if every frame were a Turner landscape. A portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man, his inspirations and ambitions, successes and setbacks. R

Taken 3 Brian Mills, the stealth operative played by Liam Neeson (and his stunt doubles), is back for another round of derring-do. This time - if the trailer isn't putting one over on us - it's to find out who really killed his ex-wife (Famke Janssen - say it ain't so!). The cops, headed by Forest Whitaker, think Mills did it, but of course he didn't (he couldn't have!). So while he's being chased, he has to chase down the real fiends, and keep his daughter (Maggie Grace) safe in the process. Tough job, but Neeson reportedly got paid $20 million to do it. PG-13