Licorice Pizza - Speculation & General Reactions

[itwasgood]

New promo

https://twitter.com/licoricepizza/status/1478410904903593999

[Jeremy Blackman]

Irrelevant comments on the theatrical experience

I need to remember that DCP in the front row is a bummer. An at-home viewing experience would have been unequivocally better.

The theater was ~60% full. Pretty impressive for a 12:50 matinee on a Tuesday afternoon in a random suburb of Minneapolis. In fact I've literally never seen a matinee that full. I felt pretty safe though, because it was mostly old folks wearing masks, and the recliner seating gives you a fair amount of space.

Actual reactions to the movie (no major spoilers)

I truly never thought I'd say this, but "minor PTA" is a phrase that fits perfectly in my mind as a descriptor for Licorice Pizza. I liked it, of course. But it's somewhere near the bottom for me. Beyond that, I'm finding it hard to judge from a single watch. I'm open-minded to having it grow on me, but my current impression is that it's clearly not a great film.

The age gap. Oh boy. I swear to God that I expected to be totally fine with it, but I find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum. It's a whole thing. The movie is sort of all about it. And I don't think it does a great job. (Many more thoughts in my spoiler review.)

I went in extremely Haim-skeptical, and I came out a convert. Alana is just as charming and likeable as everyone says. I think the trailer is a bit misleading—makes her look quite annoying, when in reality she's not at all. In fact you're sort of always "with her."

Cooper Hoffman is clearly not as skilled a performer as Alana Haim, but he still embodies his character perfectly. Any shakiness in his performance transmutes pretty well to in-character awkwardness.

Spoilers for the Asian discourse

Not that I have any standing to speak on this, but I found the infamous Asian accent scenes to be completely unproblematic. My audience of boomers responded just the way you'd want them to, laughing quietly and uncomfortably at the buffoonish white guy who is racist. I think these scenes are clearly meant to make you squirm, same as the scenes of Alana experiencing sexism. Moreover, the Asian women come off as dignified, normal people, and you get a real sense of what they have to deal with.

[Vicko99]

Does anyone have the Cahiers review

[tomthiel57]

Does anyone have the Cahiers review

Yes, I can send it to you if you give me your mail address by pm ! 

[itwasgood]

Q&A with Alana, Cooper and Paul at the New York screening a few weeks ago, professionally filmed.

[Alethia]

I was there!

[Drill]

https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/1479250819899744258

[Yes]

That account is being snarky per usual. They project doom and gloom (which isn't exactly wrong) about the marketplace.

We need to make a lot clear. Mainly, PTA has never had a hit. Secondly, we're in a pandemic. Third, MGM is taking the film slow.

Yes, the numbers aren't amazing but given the context and year they're fine. And again worth mentioning, it will receive a full expansion come closer to Oscar noms.

It's outgrossed Belfast and will outgross Spencer despite being in less theaters than both. Look at other adult dramas and similar films:
Respect- 24m
Green Knight- 17.1m
French Dispatch- 16m
Dear Evan Hansen- 15m
King Richard- 14.7m
Stillwater- 14.4m
Last Duel- 10.8m
Cry Macho- 10.2m
Last Night in Soho- 10.1m
Nightmare Alley- 8m

House of Gucci (49m), West Side Story (30m) are the top range and both are really bad normally-especially West Side

Licorice Pizza continues to post strong PTA (lol) numbers. On Wednesday, it had the 3rd highest theater average and the smallest daily drop in top 10. Also smallest drop from last week.

[Jeremy Blackman]

@ERCboxoffice is a borderline troll account that delights in snark. I assume the reporting is correct though. Do we know anything about per-screen numbers? Anecdotally, my screening (1:50pm on Tues afternoon) was packed.

[wilberfan]

Blu-Ray, March 15, 2022

https://twitter.com/GeekGabNews/status/1480324440613273602

[itwasgood]

Camera test footage and all deleted scenes for Bluray features please!

[WorldForgot]

Here's hoping a reputable or official source confirms a date soon; not seeing any sources and the amazon/retail listings all have TBD dates.

[Lewton]

I wonder if there will be a 4K UHD version, like with Phantom Thread. Hopefully?

[wilberfan]

Armond White has weighed-in on the Pizza.   Posted here for posterity.

Licorice Pizza Redefines American Beauty

Paul Thomas Anderson's most famous films, Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, cursed America. But Licorice Pizza lifts the curse with every seemingly spontaneous moment of young adult discovery. This is easily the American eccentric's best film because his usual indie-movie flaws — obscure themes, cynical perspective, and technical showing-off — are mitigated by a rare, relatable narrative. The 1970s story about California youth on the margins of show business speaks to every American teen's sense of belonging to a great, bountiful country. Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and Alana (Alana Haim) don't exactly know how things work, but their determination to participate in the party makes them soulmates.

Gary pledges love to the slightly older Alana, who is not intimidatingly pretty but quirkily girlish enough for hormonal fascination. In this gender-stressed age, most filmmakers lack the cultural confidence to tell a love story, so Anderson, instead, has made a movie about the beauty of trust. In their wild exploits — pursuing business scams, teasing the entertainment industry and Hollywood icons looming over exurban Encino, and often just running — Gary and Alana scrape against the semblance of love. It satisfies our adolescent desire for camaraderie and acceptance.

Anderson needs a good pop-music soundtrack to pull this off and finds it. The authentic period echoes of "Stumbling In," "Peace Frog," and "Life on Mars" are uncanny reminders that such minor tunes were part of the cultural fabric. The background songs give definition to Anderson's eccentric Americana.

How odd that this fantasy panoply of California/Hollywood life, the other side of America's eternal gig economy, comes across through Anderson's lo-fi indie aesthetic. He uses grandiloquent 70mm imagery for everyday frowziness

Rejecting the visual splendor that Anderson saw in Robert Altman's outsider/community films (California Split, Nashville, The Long Goodbye, 3 Women) is just plain perverse. But this wouldn't be a PTA movie without perversity. In his drive to appear smart, Anderson treats each sequence elliptically: Gary's run-in with Lucille Ball; his TV-interview effrontery with Art Linkletter; Alana's encounter with William Holden (Sean Penn), Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) figures; her defiant trick on Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) and brief venture into political work (Benny Safdie as a local pol). We lean in (as commercial movies rarely require) to infer details of his left-field storytelling.

Anderson's nearly cinema-destroying impudence contrasts with Tarantino's fan-boy romanticism in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It compares to American indie music when grunge appeared after the exquisite flowering of '80s pop — when groups such as The Smiths, ScrittiPolitti, New Order, Kate Bush, even The Cocteau Twins and The Blue Nile, explored savvy new routes of aural beauty. Anderson's new, ugly aesthetic presumes superiority over the fake-pretty La La Land yet misses the emotional, life-affirming richness that distinguished Shoplifters of the World. In that, director Stephen Kijak absorbed the philosophy of Smiths songs that allowed out-of-step listeners to unite so deeply, then commemorated that historic cultural fact in a sexually sophisticated version of American Graffiti.

Licorice Pizza's anti-beauty, indie arrogance explains the effrontery of casting Alana Haim, member of the Los Angeles pop trio Haim. (Anderson has directed several music videos for the group, and her two sisters do cameos playing funny, squabbling siblings.) Alana's lovely, slender figure counteracts her lack of movie-star appeal, and Anderson flaunts his indie-movie defiance when an agent praises Alana's features: "You have a very Jewish nose. You're a fighter!" (Not the film's only Barbra Streisand reference, it rhymes —subliminally — with Gary dressed up to resemble a pudgy Brian Wilson.)

But the deficiency of Anderson's anti-aesthetic lies in the fact that jolie laide Alana never shows us the meaning of her feelings the way a real actress does — as when Léa Seydoux turns herself ugly in France. Alana's resilience and resourcefulness, as in the bravura truck-driving sequence, could make her a gauche movie star, representing plain girls everywhere (she's most likable when she grins). Still, this idea of celebrating the commonplace comes too close to how Anderson used Vicky Krieps as a cruelty fetish in Phantom Thread — it suggests a deliberately affected and unpleasant moral posture.

Despite lively episodes of assorted unresolved interactions, Licorice Pizza's entertainment value finally gets vague. Gary and Alana return to the undistinguished masses. No great filmmaker wants that — Altman didn't, neither did Anderson's other model, Floyd Mutrux, whose marvelous '70s quotidian narratives (Aloha, Bobby and Rose, Hollywood Knights, and American Hot Wax) endowed his characters with wonder, using all the elements of beauty in a film artist's arsenal.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Leave it to Armond White to find the strangest possible take. Anti-aesthetic??