Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#201 Post by DarkImbecile » Sun Dec 12, 2021 12:53 pm


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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#202 Post by ianthemovie » Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:08 pm

I'm still not entirely sure how this happened because the theater website claimed to be fully sold out, but I randomly went through the United Artists website and was able to snag two tickets to last night's advance screening at the Coolidge. This magical stroke of serendipity ended up making a perfect fit with the movie, which is delightfully loose-limbed and shaggy. Maybe not among my very favorite of Anderson's films but still an absolute triumph and definitely the best thing I've seen this year so far.
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I love that PTA basically throws every Screenwriting 101 rule about plot and character out the window in this movie. Upon reflection it occurred to me that it has almost no conflict in any traditional sense, nor are any of the characters motivated by clearly defined goals. In one of the first scenes Gary keeps asking Alana about her life plan and her passions, and she just shrugs and smiles and says she doesn't know. (It reminded me of a comment Fran Lebowitz made recently about the generation of young people coming of age in the 70s being freed by not having their life planned out by age 20, as she claimed many young people seem to do now.) Gary would appear to be slightly more ambitious than Alana, but his goals are basically the get-rich-quick schemes of a junior-level hustler, and they change every twenty minutes. (He's a younger, sweeter version of the many hucksters that run through Anderson's filmography, from Jack Horner to Daniel Plainview to Lancaster Dodd.)

Perhaps the best (and also maybe most surprising) example of a scene that flouts any sort of storytelling "rule" seemed to me the sequence with Jon Peters, which is arguably the high point of the entire film in spite of the fact that it seems to set up a narrative payoff that never comes. We're led to anticipate some sort of violent showdown between Peters and Gary, but at the very last minute--just as Peters seems about to re-encounter Gary--this quietly gets diverted when Peters' eye is caught by two attractive women walking down the street, and seemingly forgets all about the fact that Gary has just destroyed his car. As a result the climax of this sequence turns out in hindsight to be Alana's brilliant maneuvering of the out-of-gas truck up and down the Hollywood Hills. It reminded me of the lovely narrative "fizzle" effect you get in Fellini, in which scenes don't always resolve themselves so much as they change direction at the last minute and/or dissolve into a different tonal register. I may have been thinking about this because Glenn Kenny recently tweeted something about seeing a 60s-European film influence on Anderson's last few films. (And for what it's worth the camerawork and the lighting in the motorcycle-jump scene look like they're straight out of '60s Fellini.)

Alana Haim is wonderful. Her character is 25, she feels compelled to "grow up" and seek out some sort of professional purpose, but this keeps leading her to become involved with powerful older men who merely want to use her in various ways. So she keeps drifting back to Gary, who may be young and immature but who is the only person in the movie who seems to love and appreciate her with no expectations or conditions, and who allows her to live in that space of youth and possibility and freedom.

Random other observations: Harriet Sansom Harris, who I did not recognize as Barbara Rose from Phantom Thread, has only one scene in this movie and it's absolutely brilliant. The camerawork is pure pleasure throughout. So far as I could tell there are only 1 or 2 music cues written by Johnny Greenwood but they're beautiful, delicate and light.
Can't wait for more people to see this in the coming weeks.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#203 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 12, 2021 8:21 pm

Glad you were able to score tix, ianthemovie! I was disappointed by the crowd in Boston compared to my NY screening- didn't feel like the laughs hit very hard during some of the film's subtler (and, in my opinion, best) comedic moments, and I detected more audible gasps than laughter during the 'controversial' gags, which is what I was afraid of

Great writeup though! Just one clarification
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I don't think Peters saw what happened to his car yet. He is walking the streets close to the gas station still holding the gas, maybe upset that his ride ditched him- or simply keyed up which has been established as his emotional baseline!- but I don't think he'd be back on the flat lower area of the city holding the gas canister if he walked all the way up to his car- he would either leave the gas or drive his sports car anyways (a broken windshield isn't gonna stop this guy from executing his will with full power) down to look for them to seek vengeance. A pedantic dissection maybe, but I'm sticking to it

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#204 Post by ianthemovie » Sun Dec 12, 2021 8:39 pm

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therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Dec 12, 2021 8:21 pm
I don't think Peters saw what happened to his car yet. He is walking the streets close to the gas station still holding the gas, maybe upset that his ride ditched him- or simply keyed up which has been established as his emotional baseline!- but I don't think he'd be back on the flat lower area of the city holding the gas canister if he walked all the way up to his car- he would either leave the gas or drive his sports car anyways (a broken windshield isn't gonna stop this guy from executing his will with full power) down to look for them to seek vengeance. A pedantic dissection maybe, but I'm sticking to it
That's a good point. You're right that he probably hadn't seen the damage to his car yet. Nevertheless, that scene seems to be building to a re-encounter between him and the kids since he's walking down the street toward them (and I imagine he would still have a bone to pick with them for having ditched him at the gas station)... only he doesn't seem to notice them and then gets distracted and changes direction at the last second. Typical of Anderson to land that scene off the expected beat.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#205 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 12, 2021 8:53 pm

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Yeah, I also think it feeds into my initial point regarding the film's "adults" operating under myopic narcissism that cut themselves off from interpersonal connection (including, but not limited to, love) unknowingly- Peters can't see beyond his one-track mind, whether it's 'chasing tail' or breaking what's in front of him or his raging thoughts, not even to literally 'see' the kids in front of his face! (Likewise Holden can't remove himself from a living coma, where his own egoist self-indulgence blurs reality and fantasy, to respond authentically to Alana; and Wachs can't move beyond his own agenda to even prompt his lover of the getaway plan in advance, let alone see him as an equal human being with compassion when presented with an alternative point of view)

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#206 Post by MitchPerrywinkle » Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:34 am

Caught the preview screening in Minneapolis last Saturday, and I have to echo the praise heaped on it here. Repeat viewings will yield more layers for emotional and analytical satisfaction, but I was thinking about mfunk's comparison to Brewster McCloud, which I just saw for the first time this past year. Anderson's picaresque portrait of youth differs in many ways from Altman's, not least in that the newer film has a far less brutal ending. Yet like Altman, Anderson is deploying whimsy intelligently to emphasize moments where freewheeling euphoria are punctuated by incursions of societal vestiges of inequity drawn along lines of race and class. Which leads me to talk a little about the one aspect that's gotten Twitter in a huff (predictably), and which I fear will be misinterpreted by many who haven't seen it and will refuse to do so on grounds of outrage (call it the Les Mignonnes effect, I suppose).
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The scenes are, as you'd guess, the ones with John Michael Higgins. I've already read enough criticism of his two appearances as being the worst in any of PTA's films for their abrupt, discomforting function within the plot. It's problematic, yet deliberately so, and not without greater purpose, I would argue. By introducing Higgins' casually racist and misogynist restaurateur so early in the film, Anderson plants a seed in the back of the viewer's mind which causes them to be more wary of the ways historically marginalized people have been co-opted by white, traditionally male, businessmen. Without this scene, we wouldn't be looking at the subsequent moment where Gary stumbles upon the idea to start his own waterbed company with the same degree of ambivalence. Iyana Halley's Wig Shop Brenda (the beautiful black employee of Mr. Jack) wields her sexuality to seduce a teenager into buying what she's selling, but Anderson strives to be honest with how such optics can inform one's budding sexual awakening, which is itself an integral part of our personal identity, while still tacitly acknowledging the blatantly cynical commodification of exoticized bodies, and thus cultures, in a Capitalist society. Gary himself subtly emulates this subtle form of selling cultural otherness by advertising his mattresses as being made from genuine Arabic vinyl! Yet the film even pokes fun at his complete ignorance of the geographic region he's co-opting when it actually impacts his business!

And that detail, the insidious way we are conditioned to internalize and perpetuate methods of categorizing others within different levels of social hierarchies, is what pays off in the film's devastating dinner scene with Wachs and Matthew (his heartfelt embrace of Alana is a more restrained, though no less moving, iteration of William H. Macy's pained howl in Magnolia that "I really do have love to give!"). therewillbeblus has astutely identified Wachs' callousness, but what makes it so heartbreaking is how it is informed by the expectations of the society every character in Licorice Pizza is either entering or negotiating with. Gary's perception of the swiftly frightening violence exercised by the state in his arrest is eased by him being quickly released, and by his incomprehension of why or how he was detained in the first place. It's this strain of wry absurdism which infused the politics of Inherent Vice, and while the convoluted details of Pynchon's neo-noir are absent here, the scabrous underbelly of American homogeneity abetted by Neoliberalism returns to rear its ugly head.

Of course, I wouldn't merely label Anderson a leftist filmmaker, and that expectation might end up disappointing those on the left hoping for an overtly anticapitalistic screed (which sounds like what happened when a friend of mine ran into Mike Leigh after a screening of the film and told me that he apparently hated the film). And there are myriad questions one could raise about representation when posing a challenge to any dominant historical/cultural narratives. But Anderson never deigns to speak from the perspective of anyone else while still fully embracing the contradictions and flaws of his characters. At their worst, those flaws can manifest in toxic, frighteningly grotesque paeans to privilege like Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper is indeed excellent, his transition from menacing antagonist to buffoonish clown not that dissimilar from Robert Mitchum's preacher in The Night of the Hunter). But when his characters embrace their flaws while not using them as a pretext for devaluing others, Anderson's political humanism comes to the fore and provides unforced moments of recognition, if not empathy, from the audience. As Gary zooms through a traffic jam caused, in part, by geopolitics, as he cries out "It's the end of the world," the connection to the last two years couldn't be clearer. Making a pithy comment on modern times through a period piece might make a good film, but Anderson's expansion of one's induction into the flawed, often self-absorbed world of their parents, into simple yet clearly felt terms makes Licorice Pizza a great film.

As an addendum, I wanted to return to my initial point about the scenes with HIggins by mentioning that the audience I saw the film with was visibly uncomfortable with the character. Yet we all let out a collective laugh at his admission that he doesn't speak a word of Japanese. And that punchline completely makes Higgins' character the butt of the joke. Our shared understanding of that does not negate, as Ashley Clark succinctly put it on Twitter, "the subjective experience of a person hurt/offended by the scenes", nor the need to continue discussing the problematization of historically underrepresented figures and people in popular art. But as he also notes, it's pretty clear how we're supposed to feel about a repellant asshole dressed in a suit. Maybe that's incorrect based on the last five years of politics in this country, but that sort of cynicism is antithetical to Anderson's deeply felt, well-earned optimism about love surpassing the complications of power, if only in a fleeting moment. And in these dystopic times, finding joy without succumbing to the pitfalls of empty escapism is not only rare but, I would argue, deeply necessary.
That was a very long text, and I'm not sure how much of it needs to be spoiler-boxed, but going into this as blind as possible is a gift both for having informed conversations about the problematic (a word I use not in a pejorative sense) elements of the film and to just discover the generous abundance of Anderson's filmmaking.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#207 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:43 am

Interesting thoughts, thanks for posting! I should mention that my second screening's audience did not even laugh collectively at the punchline yours did (sure, there was laughter, but it was drowned out by audible sighs of discomfort, at least from where my ears were planted)- which made me deeply uncomfortable for a variety of reasons

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#208 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 25, 2021 12:40 am


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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#209 Post by Maltic » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:20 am

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sat Dec 25, 2021 12:40 am
PT Anderson on William Holden

"I don't mean to suggest that Holden was vain in any way"


Why wouldn't he be, he was a movie star...

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#210 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:40 am

I took his comment to mean that he is not bringing up Holden's compulsive grooming habits to be psychologically sourced in vanity, but an interesting obsession with what it means to be 'masculine' in that era. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but his mention of this idiosyncrasy wasn't intended to suggest that interpretation.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#211 Post by swo17 » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:43 am

Any reason this belongs here as opposed to the general PTA thread?

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#212 Post by domino harvey » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:45 am

swo17 wrote:
Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:43 am
Any reason this belongs here as opposed to the general PTA thread?
Sean Penn’s character is based on him, I believe

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#213 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:49 am

Yes, and in addition to specific in-jokes to his filmography and lifestyle, the character's last name is also Holden

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#214 Post by swo17 » Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:24 am

Figured something like that was a possibility, thanks

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#215 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 25, 2021 4:41 pm

Just got back a little while ago from seeing this. While I liked it, I didn't love it (this stays on the outskirts of my top five Andersons). I think I'm more fond of his heavy drama pieces. But whether I like or love I am always excited to and appreciative of seeing his films. A truly great filmmaker. A special shout-out for Alana Haim. OMG. She was ridiculously great. I hope she can make room for a statue somewhere because she has a chance at a couple. And of course the score/soundtrack is as expected; damn good.

I love that his films are drenched in movie history even if in the most subtle of ways. Needless to say, I'm looking for forward to his next work. BTW... Was he taking a little shot at Barbra Streisand?

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#216 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:21 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sat Dec 25, 2021 4:41 pm
BTW... Was he taking a little shot at Barbra Streisand?
I don't see what would make you think so, or single her out as the celebrity PTA could be taking a shot at? Certainly the script has more refined jabs at Lucille Ball, Julie Andrews, Mary Grady, William Holden, Joel Wachs, and Jon Peters, but all purposed for either off-the-cuff jokes or deeper thematic functions. The actual story of delivering a waterbed to Peters played out completely differently in real life, and PTA obtained Peters' permission to exaggerate the encounter and his character in the opposite direction, so it's been openly admitted that creative liberties were taken to use celebrities in the service of humor divorced from their actual character- though I don't recall any dig at Streisand to begin with!

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#217 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:47 pm

I didn't read them as refined jabs. To me they were exaggerated and over the top to make it feel more like parody of those people you mentioned where as with Streisand through the Jon Peters character makes her seem just like a difficult person without any comedic play on that. Just my thought as I was watching

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#218 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 25, 2021 6:00 pm

I meant that as in precisely-directed, for example in the case of Andrews, which through comparison by the character who has experience working for both, I thought made Streisand look better. If anything, Peters' temperament suggests that any statements made by him regarding Streisand could be as skewed as his inexorable assumptions about anything else
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like.. that he and Gary are "both from the streets"

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#219 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Jan 01, 2022 4:06 pm

As much as I happily enjoyed pretty much every moment of Licorice Pizza while watching it, I can't help but wish I felt as deeply and warmly about it as twbb, mfunk, Drucker, and others. Instead, this settled right at PTA's (absurdly high) floor for me — it's been 20 years since I saw the mangled Hard Eight, so that doesn't really count, but I think this is my least favorite fully realized Anderson feature, and I've been puzzling over why that might be for days. I've settled on the explanation that as much as I savor Anderson's films for all the care and thought that goes into every technical element, what I've come to look forward to most is the unexpected, the narrative/formal/frog-related twist on what you expect the film to be, and Licorice Pizza is... basically what it says on the wrapper. Which is still quite good and worthwhile, but didn't leave me wanting to walk directly out of the theater to buy a ticket for the next screening for the first time in 25 years.

That said: I know there's a lot of excitement around Alana Haim's very good performance, but I was stunned by Cooper Hoffman, whose performance is the most exciting acting debut I've seen in a long, long time, showcasing a verve and depth that totally belie his age and experience. This sounds hyperbolic, but I genuinely think that if he wants it, he has every chance of being as accomplished an actor as his father.

Also, now that I've seen it, the twin controversies that have hijacked much of the social media conversation about the film feel wildly overblown: from the discomfort and anger expressed elsewhere, I was expecting much worse from the Jerry Frick character (who is clearly the target of derision), and the clamor over "age-inappropriate" relationships in fiction remains one of the least convincing moral panics in the cultural conversation.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#220 Post by Drucker » Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:18 am

Saw this again tonight and loved it even more than the first time. Here are some thoughts I have. Having followed the conversations on Twitter I can't help but notice people are inclined to lump periods of Anderson's work together, so I've taken a stab at that myself. I also am overdo for a re-watch of Inherent Vice which has never perfectly gelled with me, but with that said...
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PTA's latest finds him continuing a theme I'm observing in all of his post-Magnolia films, which is the role competition plays in forming interpersonal relationships. Sometimes the competition is never resolved, and in his two great masterpieces, The Master and There Will Be Blood, the films boil down to this conflict as their essence. In the latter, Daniel Plainview opines that he hates most people, and sees the worst in them. In The Master, Dodd believes he can save man, and he sets out to do so in a film that asks the question: can man overcome his own nature?

But with Inherent Vice, that competition turns to smaller, more interpersonal relationships. Doc’s character is trying to save one person. In Phantom Thread, we finally are given a male protagonist that seemingly has met his match. We see a blossoming relationship that forms from a competitive spirit. The whole courtship is a competition for time, status, attention, and the upper hand in a relationship. Eventually Woodcock resigns, and it’s clear he has been defeated and has met his match.

I’m not sure what led PTA to go back to feelings of youth, but I find Licorice Pizza and it's exploration of relationships to be every bit as powerful as Phantom Thread. Notice how in both the two have a relationship that is more professional than romantic. In fact the romantic aspect of the relationship is purposely ambiguous and often one sided. What Hoffman’s character in Licorice Pizza and Kriep’s character represent however is more than a new partner, but a sign of changing times. Change is coming, and it is coming to more than just the house of Woodcock or Bernie’s Waterbed and Pinball Palace. Woodcock is getting a little older. He’s losing a step, he’s losing clients, and kids are using slang and vernacular that he is unaccustomed to. Alana Kane must also come to realize that time is no longer waiting for her. She’s 25, she lives with her parents and doesn’t have a full-time job. The world is changing. Men are giving her lots of attention. There are oil shortages. She’s becoming grown-up and aware of the world, and looking for a figure that will help guide her through uncertain and seemingly scarier times. And just as Krieps character gives Woodcock what he doesn’t realize he needs in Thread, Gary Valentine is just the man Kane needs in her life, though it takes a while for her to admit it and realize it, even though Gary knew this to be true from the moment he laid eyes on her. The film ends on a more optimistic note than its predecessor. There is an actual power balance in the relationship between Gary and Alana, and it reflects the youngness of their characters in contrast to the maturity of the relationship at the center of Phantom Thread. Nonetheless, this is a film about recognizing the value of the spirit of cooperation, especially in relationships, and especially with our partners.

PTA is no longer a young upstart that is cocky enough to give direction to Burt Reynolds while directing only his second film. He made no secret of the inspiration a comment from his partner Maya Rudolph had on the plot of Phantom Thread. Every film since Punch Drunk Love has had some degree to which a character is insistent on proving something to themselves, or someone else, and in Licorice Pizza, PTA realizes you don’t have to go it alone.
DarkImbecile wrote:
Sat Jan 01, 2022 4:06 pm
As much as I happily enjoyed pretty much every moment of Licorice Pizza while watching it, I can't help but wish I felt as deeply and warmly about it as twbb, mfunk, Drucker, and others. Instead, this settled right at PTA's (absurdly high) floor for me — it's been 20 years since I saw the mangled Hard Eight, so that doesn't really count, but I think this is my least favorite fully realized Anderson feature, and I've been puzzling over why that might be for days. I've settled on the explanation that as much as I savor Anderson's films for all the care and thought that goes into every technical element, what I've come to look forward to most is the unexpected, the narrative/formal/frog-related twist on what you expect the film to be, and Licorice Pizza is... basically what it says on the wrapper. Which is still quite good and worthwhile, but didn't leave me wanting to walk directly out of the theater to buy a ticket for the next screening for the first time in 25 years.
I really appreciated your thoughts and this and wanted to think about and address it as I thought about the film. I have to admit, for the first screening I saw this, I was giddy going into the film, and surely 50% of my enjoyment of the film was getting to see it for the first time, in 70MM, packed theater, etc. etc. My two favorite PTA films are probably The Master and Phantom Thread. In the former you have the naked piano scene, and in the latter, you have Woodcock's mother appearing as an apparition, an image so powerful my jaw completely dropped upon watching that scene for the first time. I will concede this film lacks a moment as powerful as either of those. Nevertheless, I did have some thoughts on your point:
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It didn't dawn on me upon my first viewing how much Alana is really the star of this film, and it doesn't feel like enough has been made of the fact that PTA has made a film centered around a female, especially after the criticsm DDL's depiction of Reynolds Woodcock received! There's a quiet power to her character as she sits on the sidewalk, watching her male friend pretend to jackoff to a gasoline container, as she hides her head in her crotch while last night's male admirer, one of many, walks past her, throwing a tantrum. Young and old alike, the men she is surrounded by are lacking. In a scene shortly after, she finally pushes Gary away as they have their most interesting sparring match of the film, where he lights the cigarettes, and she throws one barb too many, leading to him driving off without her. This scene was reminiscent of the dinner table scene in PT, with Woodcock asking if she's a secret agent sent to ruin his life. It's the first time she seems to realize she has taken it too far, and maybe Alana is the one pushing Gary away.

Anyway, this may not be what you were seeking, but that argument right before Gary takes Alana's car was the most powerful one in the film for me. The real moment where Alana caused real damage and pain to a relationship she almost never takes seriously.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#221 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:11 pm

I found each element/moment you note enjoyable and meaningful, and I should reiterate that I did really like the film, and it’s only by comparison to PTA’s other work that it feels slight. I think it’s ultimately just a matter of taste in that my favorite moments in his work — and the moments that characterize my favorite films generally — are the daring flourishes of style or artistry that get my heart rate going (and so often seem to induce eye-rolling in others who appreciate something more grounded). It’s an entirely self-imposed ceiling on films like this one, and not necessarily one that would have been appropriate for this particular film to break through.

I think I have the same issue with much of Linklater’s output, which I tend to like but not adore to the extent so many others do: there’s so much that is warm and satisfying about a naturalistic, precisely observed period character study like Licorice Pizza or Everybody Wants Some!!, but they often lack those moments of risk-taking that I personally find so rewarding. Maybe the closest thing to these types of films that I’ve truly loved have been Mike Mills’ last two films, both of which take some structural and visual detours in addition to similarly meaningful examinations of character and place.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#222 Post by Red Screamer » Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:12 pm

Licorice Pizza is Anderson’s attempt to combine the looser, more observational style of his recent films with the frenzied, sweeping ensemble narratives of his earlier work. They collide with some awkwardness: the overstuffed pop soundtrack seems kinda out of place and the story’s race from emotional-cultural peak to peak can feel at odds with the intimacy at its core. Like Phantom Thread it’s a film about the shifting dynamic of a relationship. Instead of challenging each other in dominant-submissive games like the Woodcocks, Alana and Gary turn their feelings outward, playing out confusing emotional highs and lows in their new jobs, new relationships, new identities. They trade off having the upper hand with each other but against the world they’re just kids, flailing around trying to assert themselves. This becomes uncomfortably clear in the scene between Haim and Sean Penn, where she drinks too much and de-matures before our eyes, her attitude and smirk pulled back to reveal the vulnerability of a child. “I don’t know but I’m sexy right?”

Here’s where the brilliance of Anderson's stylistic collision comes in. The tonal flexibility and slow burn and/or long takes of his last two films' questioning gaze (toward everything in the paranoid Inherent Vice; of the couple toward each other in the romantic Phantom Thread) is reserved for the adults in the film—outside of that breathtaking opening—while the young people at its center are depicted in vivid psychological closeness. The mysterious scene with Harriet Sansom Harris, who’s alternately creepy, funny, supportive, and emotionally overbearing, could be straight from Inherent Vice. But instead of that uncertain feeling coming in the context of noir menace, it comes out of the anxiety of a young woman at a job interview. This is the key to Licorice Pizza’s dual not-coming-of-age story. It powerfully puts us in the perspective of Alana and Gary as they try to figure out what the hell is going on in this world they’re inheriting. After the parade of puzzling adults who are some mixture of sinister and ridiculous and who clearly do not have things under control, it’s not hard to see why they keep returning to each other.

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Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#223 Post by tehthomas » Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:54 pm

This is the first film I have watched in a theater since Winter 2020.
Seeing Licorice Pizza on film (70mm, Music Box) seemed like the perfect way to go 'back to the movies.'
Having this joy of movie-going restored, I thought the low-stakes, hang-out, good times '70's vibes of Licorice Pizza was the perfect milieu for the magic of watching a film
in a room full of strangers and having that experience again.
The look of this film is mesmerizing, it feels so authentic to that time period. Height of craft.

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Black Hat
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:34 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#224 Post by Black Hat » Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:51 pm

I wonder how people would feel about Licorice Pizza if it wasn't directed by Paul Thomas Anderson? It's an overly long, pointless, and meanderingly indulgent slog. A nostalgia epic made to order for white male boomers, along with their sons old enough to remember classic rock radio, who feel left out of Star Wars reboots. While I have great sympathy for desperately wanting a good Hollywood movie this, I'm afraid, ain't it. Stop trying so hard.

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

#225 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:58 pm

Do Boomers even like this movie? Isn't the core viewing audience younger?

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