Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

"They're all shits, aren't they?"

Licorice Pizza as a description of a vinyl record and as a title getting at the essence of 1973 is really great

I think I posted in the "puns you took a long time to get" thread about LP, thinking for the longest time that it was just a hippie, weird combination of words thing, like Strawberry Alarm Clock.

seems you haven't gotten "Strawberry Alarm Clock" yet

jk

Ha!

Finally saw this. Skillfully made but definitely not my cup of fuzzy nostalgia.

I can’t figure out if I actually like this less the more distance I get from it, or if I simply care less about it one way or the other.

This movie was not good.

Very well made, I guess, but the "plot" was incredibly disjointed. The attempt to suddenly raise the stakes through the Bradley Cooper diversion didn't do it for me, at all. Just lurching for drama.

raise the lols, not the stakes

^^^

the film that most captures my high school experience in the 1970s is still Dazed and Confused. It was a more rural and much less sophisticated world than that depicted in Licorice Pizza.

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