![]() ![]() If Anderson is returning to a familiar milieu, this is nothing like Boogie Nights, that three-act tragicomedy about the sparkle and grime of the golden age of porn. They eventually decide to go into business together in the next California gold rush: selling waterbeds. The pair embark on a hot-cold friendship that is laced with both of their insecurities and a long-standing crush that seems to pinball between them with variable intensity. Gary wastes no time in making transparent but entertaining overtures to date the 25-year-old. He meets the long-legged, birdlike Alana (Alana Haim) on school picture day she’s unhappily employed by the photography company. Gary’s a child actor who has grown a little too old and awkward to continue picking up work in the perma-tanned, David Cassidy–obsessed ’70s. The film centers around 15-year-old Gary Valentine, played by Cooper Hoffman, whose chubby face looks oddly adult, perhaps because of his striking resemblance to his father Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Its working title was the far less appealing “Soggy Bottom,” in reference to the ill-advised name of the waterbed company in the story.) The thing about a record is that when it’s serving its purpose it’s perpetually in motion so too is Licorice Pizza. But it contains no depictions of record stores or even records as such. It’s a given that vinyl evokes nostalgia, and Licorice Pizza’s soundtrack features all the requisite period-correct McCartney and Bowie needle-drops. Here, Anderson’s latest sets out to evoke the as-of-late fashionable vibes of 1973 denim jackets, the reek of patchouli, Laurel Canyon tunes, passenger-seat leather sticking to your thighs in the summer heat. Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature film, and his third set in California in the 1970s, takes its title from a fabled record store, based in SoCal during the same period. Paul Thomas Anderson, U.S., United Artists ![]()
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