Licorice Pizza

Cast View all

	Will Angarola	Kirk
	Griff Giacchino	Mark
	James Kelley	Tim
	Cooper Hoffman	Gary
	Alana Haim	Alana
	Dexter Demme	Cherry Bomb Kid
	River Cornwell	Cherry Bomb Kid
	Harrison Bray	Cherry Bomb Kid
	Sasha Spielberg	Tiny Toes Girl
	Karissa Reynafarje	Tiny Toes Girl
	Savannah Ioakimedes	Tiny Toes Girl
	Dorie Samovitz	Tiny Toes Girl
	Anna Cordell	Tiny Toes Girl
	Adam Somner	Tiny Toes Photographer
	Joshua Carl Allen	Tiny Toes Photographer
	Patrick Hoelck	Tiny Toes Photographer
	Collin Sutton	Tiny Toes Photographer
	Lucia Angarola	Grant High School Student
	Lola Brown	Grant High School Student
	Nancy Cornwell	Grant High School Student
	Harry Fincher	Grant High School Student
	Laura Gary	Grant High School Student
	Julie Goldklang	Grant High School Student
	Ava Gosselaar	Grant High School Student
	Lila Kay	Grant High School Student

Crew View all

Director	Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer	Paul Thomas Anderson
Producer	Paul Thomas Anderson, Jason Cloth, Aaron L. Gilbert, Daniel Lupi, Susan McNamara, Sara Murphy, JoAnne Sellar, Adam Somner
Musician	Jonny Greenwood
Photography	Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Bauman

Personal

Notes

My quick rating - 6,9/10. Popping on number 7 of the #Oscars2022 best pic nominees. Quick comment. This movie stars Alana Haim playing a sexual predator...or as they are calling it, young adults traversing their first loves in San Fernando Valley, 1973. She is 25, and the first guy or kid she interacts with is 15, played by Cooper Hoffman. It took minutes before I was wondering how wrong this story is from the get-go. I doubt casting a 30-year-old woman as the star that could easily pass for 14 wasn't an accident. Hoffman plays a hustler who does a great job in being smug and youthfully ignorant. But he does it in such a believable way it works very well. Haim on the other hand is a strange character. I don't know if I should be vilifying her, or hoping she can get help for a mental disability. But that is something I noticed throughout this whole movie. The quirkiness of the characters is taken so far to the extreme that aside from Hoffman, I didn't find any of them believable. Then again, his 15 year old hustling also goes way past what could be accomplished so I am having this dialogue with myself as I type LOL. Paul Thomas Anderson isn't a stranger to Oscar season and has again brought us a tale that feels more like short vignettes tied together into a story, than a start to finish flick. Makes sense though due to his ties to shorts and music videos. I noticed at the end that the entire family in the movie is played by actors with the last name of Haim, so looking into it briefly, apparently, that family has some close ties to PTA and are in a band which he has directed music videos for. I was completely in the dark about all of that until the film ended in exactly what you are expecting. Supposedly this is a somewhat true memoir of what PTA grew up with but being he is 3 years older than I, there is a ton of embellishment to that portion of the story. There are tons of nostalgic tidbits sprinkled throughout and quite a few characters that are clearly based on similar people from the time which leads to the realism of the flick. I found parts of this quite amusing but in the 133 minutes of it, I never got past the outlying issue of it just being about a sexual predator. Once you do get past that, you may enjoy this one. Not my pick for the gold statue this year though.

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