5:25 PM. 1 hour, 5 minutes till doors open. I make a mad dash out of work to the car, the rain is splattering down, so I’m careful on my way home, but I still don’t want to be late. Event Cinemas will spam you with 20 minutes worth of trailers and ads that I now know by heart, I have no idea how much time I’ll have until the movie starts at this venue. I arrive home, get dressed and dash back out to the car but before I can drive off, Ben Folds gets in the passenger seat and buckles his seat belt. As my windshield wipers struggle to sail through the flood, Ben just sings about romance in high school and a newsman being forced out of his job. I drive to the parking garage I use when going to the dentist and it says its closing time is 6:30. It’s 6:15 now. Fuck. Google Maps shepherds me through the many parking garages before landing me in an almost empty free parking lot. I don’t have time to breathe as I run through the rain, begging to God I don’t slip or trip before I finally make it there at 6:31. Society City. I’ve arrived.
‘Licorice Pizza’ is the latest film by Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of a few of my favorites (‘Boogie Nights’, ‘The Master’, ‘Punch-Drunk Love’), but alas, none of them prepared me for this. ‘Licorice Pizza’, like all movies that are a mind-fuck, is only confusing when you try to form the story as you watch it. You might feel this with ‘Tenet’ or ‘The Master’ or Mulholland Drive’, but these films are all the more interpretive in that sense. I feel like ‘Licorice Pizza’ has no right answer. I feel like it could be the prequel to Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character from ‘Punch-Drunk’ or it could be a slide-show of all the terrible, toxic dating habits we find in the world today. It could be about growing up too fast and being caught up in politics and capitalism when we really just need to live our own lives first. Yeah, this film is more confusing than trying to create a timeline of ‘Mulholland Drive’, but it’ll get your brain working about what it could mean.
Gary Valentine is a 15-year-old actor who is smitten by Alana Kane, a 25-year-old yearbook photographer who is well aware of the age-gap and wants nothing to do with him. After Gary convinces her to spend time with him, however, a bond begins to form, not romantic, but not friendly either. Throughout the year, we watch as their kind-of-relationship shifts and morphs against a backdrop of 1970s film stars, teenagers, politicians and waterbed/pinball machine enthusiasts. As Gary tries to make something of himself as a businessman and Alana yearns to make a difference, their paths start to split and they must decide to say goodbye or try to salvage their whatever-the-hell-it-is.
Cooper Hoffman, the son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, plays Gary remarkably. He’s someone you want to root for, but you can see he’s not completely a good person, he’s charming and charismatic, but he’s got a dark, vengeful side, and Cooper hits all these marks perfectly. The only thing worth changing is his haircut in the film, which makes him look too much like his father. To each to their own, but I feel Cooper would have made a much larger mark if he didn’t look too much like Phillip Seymour. Alana Haim plays Alana and for the dialogue she’s given, she does an amazing job, but I think Paul Thomas needed to distinguish her more from Gary, they both act as if they’re the same age, with Alana sometimes leading Gary and Gary sometimes leading Alana. For a 25-year-old, I think they made Alana look too young, but otherwise, Haim did an outstanding job portraying a “big sister” kind of character.
I would put on trial in federal court if I didn’t talk about how lovely Society City was as a venue. Normally when you’d go to the cinema, sometimes you’d be bothered by loud children or teenagers, you’d have to deal with a nonstop stream of ads for companies that you wouldn’t much care for and even when the movie starts, you have to watch the cinema logo run, curtains slowly shut and open again, revealing a sponsor and then finally be able to see the movie. Society City is the complete antithesis of all this. The bloke running the place was incredibly friendly when I needed assistance, instead of putting on trailers you’ve already seen, we were treated to trailers from the 70s, and even when the film started to stutter and buffer, it wasn’t a problem because the atmosphere was just what I’ve been looking for: a small group of like-minded strangers watching a film together. Sure, you can get that at the cinemas, but you don’t get the same sense of community. Like the name suggests, the society, the community comes first. Consider me a repeat attender!
Mason’s Top 3 Reasons To See ‘Licorice Pizza’
- A film weird enough to break the monotony of linear, mindless action films
- Bradley Cooper’s most hilarious performance as an aggressive, sex-obsessed and probably drugged-up film producer
- A film that can make us all laugh at how ridiculous the dating scene has become
Image Credit: IMDb
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