Licorice Pizza

True to form, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film Licorice Pizza blends exactness with surrealism in its depiction of a visionary schemer (and / or scammer) in his habitat.

Anderson's period and subject is early '70s Southern California where a 15-year-old entrepreneur and actor named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), of Sherman Oaks, convinces an aimless and angry young woman named Alana Kane (Alana Haim) to join him in a few misshapened money-making opportunities (selling waterbeds, opening a pinball arcade), with the unspoken assumption that one day she would disrobe.

Young Gary joins the ranks of Anderson's other great minds -- the porn producer of Boogie Nights (1997), the petroleum prospector of There Will Be Blood (2007), the conniving conman of The Master (2012), the fashion fetishist of Phantom Thread (2017) -- but Gary's obsessions don't lead to ruin or madness. He realizes chasing a dream often leaves one wondering what is to be done with the dream once caught. Maybe life's true joy is in the chase. An important consideration.

Alana's journey is as important as Gary's as she commandeers his plans to keep them on the rails. She discovers a lot about her own capacities, separate from the alienating expectations of her family or her semi-employed friends or the false idols she's erected to give the world meaning. Alana's brashness gives the picture its spark, her brittleness its heart.

Licorce Pizza takes its name from a chain of California record stores and the film itself features an abundance of Nixon-era AM radio hits.