Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

The longer this guy's career drags on the more convinced I am that his only two good movies are Hard Eight and The Master. This new one could not be more Not For Me unless it was a puppet musical.

Soon to be a campus/sleepover double feature with Lady Bird.

xp I’m convinced The Master and Hard Eight are his two worst films

The title may be a nod to Diane Kurys' Peppermint Soda (never seen it, but supposedly very good)...Trailer is promising--happy he's not in England 50 years ago--song choice could have been more imaginative.

i remember the phantom thread thread opening with a bunch of ilxors crowing "this looks boring" after watching the trailer :)

The title may be a nod to Diane Kurys' Peppermint Soda

Licorice Pizza was a 70s/early 80s West Coast record store chain.

song choice could have been more imaginative

All Streisand or gtfo...

looking forward to P.T. Anderson's Avenue Q now

The stills look like a gritty reboot of Dazed & Confused.

this can only be objectively good if she leaves him in the end

The Bowie song is doing 95% of the emotional labour in this trailer, still curious about the film.

The Master is incredible, WTF. Did not like The Phantom Thread at the time but my memories of it have softened.

the master is truly awesome

it is, and i am pumped about this new one, it looks fantastic

Now *this* is how you make a trailer. Gets your attention, bits of stuff here and there, but no idea what the plot is and don't feel like anything has been ruined or spoiled.

agree though, xp, that having Life on Mars? as the soundtrack to the trailer helps a lot.

however, imo you have to have some wonderful footage/performances to be able to hang with Life on Mars and not get embarrassed, so i take this as a good sign

Deleted Jonny Greenwood tweet:

Oh it’s a lovely film. Only wrote a couple of cues for it - the score is all 70’s source cues (and all the better for that) - you’re all in for a giant PTA-shaped treat…

feels more like adventureland than dazed and confused to me, but with added tom waits so that's cool

i know that they're both of a similar cloth.

anyway, i'm looking forward to pta's linklater film!

I'm very territorial when it comes to '70s' soundtracks. I'm wildly looking forward to the music here (looks like his first full-out pop movie since Boogie Nights), and I know I'll be excessively critical if it doesn't comport to how I, clemenza, think everything should have been done.

It's funny, this looks much more like Boogie Nights-meets-Dazed and Confused than anything else to me.

I also haven't seen any of his more recent movies, tbh, because I stopped going to the movies for more than a decade.

gonna watch the hell outta this

kinda looks like Bradley Cooper learned to smash car windows from Frank Mackey

This looks like it's probably enjoyable but the trailer was obnoxiously trailery

i love this already GIVE IT TO ME

I guess it's hilarious that Cooper's in the role of Streisand's boyfriend after his turn in A Star is Born

Not to be a buzzkill because it generally looks great and I'm excited to see it, but am I the only one slightly weirded out by 29-year-old Alana Haim's love interest being 17-year-old Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza?

— Bonnie Stiernberg (@aahrealbonsters) September 28, 2021

are people utterly unable to detect subtext anymore?

people don't know how to watch things

They could swap this trailer out for the one for the Sopranos prequel and no one would notice

huh?

I think that was meant to be supporting evidence for Brad's assertion

Oh that makes sense, I read it as a dismissive thing about it being another period piece with an actor's kid.

Awards Blogger/Movie Lefsetz Jeffrey Wells serves up the hot takes re: the casting of Alana Haim

https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2021/09/i-say-again/

FWIW, up until now I didn't know how old she is, but have people suddenly forgotten that actors (particularly those playing young folks) aren't playing their exact ages most of the time. I can certainly buy her playing younger, definitely either side of 20, which is what it looks like she's doing in the film.

it seems like there's an age difference between the characters in the film that will not go uncommented upon, for whatever that's worth

trying to hard for years to be less strident in my musical opinions but can arthouse movie bros please please give Hunky Dory era Bowie a rest for God's sake

*so hard

9.20.21: It seems to me that if you’re a major-league director making a supposedly important film about a couple of love-struck kids (even though the off-screen Haim is pushing 30), you can go with one unknown as long as you pair him/her with a skilled name-brand actor, but you can’t have two unknowns carrying the film because no one will care all that much.

I mean, movies deal in familiar faces and personalities for a reason…right?

There are basic rules about young person relationship movies. Rule #1 is that at least one of the kids should be a half-familiar face, which helps with the comfort factor. Rule #2 is that the kids have to be at least somewhat attractive, not just to each other but to the audience. I’m sorry but ginger-haired Cooper Hoffman looks nerdy and freckly. I can’t put myself in his shoes. I really can’t. Haim isn’t anyone’s idea of a knockout either. The idea seems to be “the odd couple.”

this guy gets paid to talk about movies? who is this mother fucker?

can i get a picture of this guy so i can talk about whether or not he's fuckable? hold on

He should be so lucky to look as attractive as Cooper Hoffman.

https://i.imgur.com/IGYUsmz.png

Haim isn’t anyone’s idea of a knockout either.

https://i.imgur.com/IGYUsmz.png

Haim isn’t anyone’s idea of a knockout either.

https://i.imgur.com/IGYUsmz.png

Haim isn’t anyone’s idea of a knockout either.

https://i.imgur.com/IGYUsmz.png

Haim isn’t anyone’s idea of a knockout either.

he couldn't be any more Incel in the Basement Criticizing Tits if he wanted to be

Rule #2 is that the kids have to be at least somewhat attractive, not just to each other but to the audience.

rules are meant to be broken in half and then used to beat the rulemakers

Oh, he's the "could you send me nude outtakes of Vinessa Shaw please" guy. I thought he rang a bell.

https://deadline.com/2007/09/creepiest-email-from-a-blogger-to-hollywood-3216/

He's such a sexist/racist/other -ist turd and he's been a turd for years. I have no doubt the same people that say "actors have to be pretty" mock actors that go sans makeup etc. in movies for chasing awards.

PTA's been on a roll since 2012 imo.

2014

PTA's been on a roll since his first movie, imo. Even his not great movies, whichever ones one thinks are not great, are always interesting and worth seeing.

And Jeffrey Wells has leaned so far into his role as an idiot villain he makes nu-Arm0nd look nuanced and insightful in comparison. At least the latter still watches and analyzes movies, some of the time.

i pledge to never read anything about movies ever again unless an ilxor wrote it

wells' review of Wizard of Oz (1939) - "judy garland is certainly a bombshell and a good casting decision, but what's with the long dress all the time? the tin man, scarecrow, and lion supporting cast was an absolute mess - all three are clearly older men in costumes and makeup. and why didn't scarecrow have a sex scene with dorothy at the end? clearly there was a connection there."

PTA was only just born in 1970 so he does not really know from experience what 1970s high school was like. The movie seems like a fantasy from a kid’s point of view about high schoolers and adults back then

maybe that's what redeems it though, kind of. It still seems very shaggy and unfocused

I don't think this film is making very much of an effort to portray a realistic high school experience either

It's definitely making very much of an effort, that's for sure.

I've decided this is Telegraph Avenue: the Movie.

When I’m pausing and coming back to the movie over multiple days during my first viewing of it is probably not a good sign of where I’d place it in my PTA power rankings. Have no problem that it’s nowhere near grounded but maybe it was a little too far off the ground for me.

I just don’t much care for PTA when he seems focused, at the end of the day

some of the reactions to this — lolita, really? — are so predictably bourgeois… anyway I really enjoyed this review I saw on letterboxd:

https://boxd.it/2pUpCn

― auld gang syne (k3vin k.), Wednesday, January 12, 2022 4:47 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

thank you for posting this review, it's really great and very precise about what's going on with the central relationship of the movie.

That is a great review

Phantom Thread is the only one of his movies I still haven’t seen.

Loved LP.

Inherent Vice is the only dud.

*clutches heart* ah you wound me :(

also that review is so good - illustrates so clearly what i loved about it — now i wanna watch the movie again

I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t think PTA has at least three duds

I really liked this film, but Alana carries the overwhelming majority of it. Didn’t think the Gary role was very well acted.

he just smiled and gave me a licorice pizza

I finally saw Hard Eight, leaving Phantom Thread as the only one I haven't seen. Hard Eight is fine, a little slight and way too in thrall to that whole '90s thing of how every flick had to turn needlessly bloody and violent in the final act, but Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly save it from being a dud.

Of the ones I've seen I'd probably rank 'em

Boogie Nights
Magnolia
Inherent Vice
Licorice Pizza
There Will Be Blood
Hard Eight
The Master
Punch-Drunk Love

Descending order:

Phantom Thread
The Master
Inherent Vice
Boogie Nights
There Will Be Blood
Hard Eight
Magnolia
Punch-Drunk Love

i watched hard eight pretty recently and its better than my memory of it (which was favorable btw), v direct & affecting imo

I would have loved the hell out of Hard Eight had I seen it back in 1996, but from 2022, I wanted more of the first two thirds - just Hall and Reilly talking and bumping up against Vegas weirdos.

Magnolia is the only one I think is bad.

PTA is 9 for 9, fuiud

i haven’t seen hard eight but i agree w whiney basically

What am I missing in Inherent Vice? I watched it a second time and likes it even less. It just…. wanders. It’s kinda like the Big Lebowski if you drained the humor out of it.

inherent vice is very funny

if josh brolin chewing and swallowing a lit blunt doesn’t make you laugh, idk

inherent vice is a whole vibe & it is glorious

i mean fuck, it’s basically freaked-out chandler + weed x paranoia … what could be more enjoyable

and yeah, it’s funny as hell

It's a weird movie for sure. I like it a lot but I get why people don't. There's so many similar vibe, shaggy dog neo-noirs from the '60s/'70s that leave me cold and I'm still not sure why Inherent Vice worked for me when like, The Long Goodbye didn't

Just watched this, can I say it's simultaneously a good movie and a lousy one?

Good: Alana Haim is spectacular, Hoffmann is convincing enough, I did believe the relationship (though I don't have great hopes that it will last, it's so contingent on the specific points they're both at in their lives), I appreciate the continuing Haim family multiverse (see also "No Body No Crime")
Bad: the plot that moved the characters between emotional checkpoints...boring and way too long. Especially the Hollywood stuff that I've seen before. I wish I could have seen the same characters in a different film.

Ultimately the only PTA I've liked is Inherent Vice (have not seen The Phantom Thread), maybe we're not meant to be.

rewatching, can confirm still great

“Ugh, Danielle I’m eliminating property tax for the elderly and saving the mountains and you’re talking about free Pepsi”

that part in licorice pizza where you hear the todd rundgren radio ad is the closest i've come to experiencing asmr

— boss crude (@bosscrood) December 15, 2022

lol i love that part

the way Alana is reading Jack Holden’s face like an ancient text for ANY clue of what the fuck he’s talking about