Why Paul Thomas Anderson returned to the Valley for ‘Licorice Pizza’

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Among the more eccentrically uncategorizable projects of this year is Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” running over seven hours long and premiering in three parts on Disney+. Drawn from some 57 hours of footage and 140 of audio recordings, the movie (miniseries?) about the Beatles working on the music that would become their final album, “Let It Be,” is being positioned as a corrective to Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary “Let It Be.”

For The Times, Stuart Miller spoke to Jackson, Lindsay-Hogg and producer Giles Martin. As Jackson said, “It’s a weird case of memory and fact being warped by the events of the time. Even today, Paul and Ringo think back to the 1969 sessions through a filter of ‘Let It Be’ in 1970, a time that was very contentious and upsetting for them. Time sort of collapsed reality and fiction. … The truth is a complicated concept, but I’ve tried to tell the story as accurately as possible.”

As part of its ongoing tribute to the movies of 1971, this weekend the American Cinematheque will show three New York City-set films presented by author Jason Bailey to celebrate his terrific new book, “Fun City Cinema.” William Friedkin’s “The French Connection” and Jerry Schatzberg’s “The Panic in Needle Park” (with a screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne) play at the Los Feliz Theatre on Saturday, but the must-see rarity is Sunday’s showing of Miloš Forman’s American debut, “Taking Off.” I saw “Taking Off” — which isn’t streaming and can be difficult to see outside a rare screening — when the Cinematheque last showed it back in the pre-pandemic days, and its uproarious generational culture-clash comedy was a very memorable rep house experience.

The new season of The Envelope podcast launches next week on Nov. 30. The first episode features my conversation with Kirsten Dunst, talking about her long career and her latest role in Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.” (The opportunity to hear Dunst read a letter that Campion sent her years ago is not to be missed.)

On her role as a tortured widow-turned-wife in 1920s Montana, Dunst said, “I think Rose is a very old part of myself that I had to rehash of just feeling really bad about myself, or allowing myself to feel bad about myself because of other people’s comments or control. In your early 20s, it’s very easy to get swayed into different things or thinking about yourself in a certain way, especially when you’re putting yourself out there as an actress and you’re in a public light. So there are definitely things I can relate to in terms of feeling really badly about yourself.”

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‘Licorice Pizza’

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza” is a warm, embracing look at growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. Fifteen-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is a child actor and unstoppable hustler, constantly coming up with moneymaking schemes like water beds and pinball halls. He falls in with Alana Kane (Alana Haim), a 25-year-old woman who hasn’t quite found herself yet, and the two embark on a more-than-friendship, not-exactly-romance relationship. The film is playing now in New York and Los Angeles, including in 70mm at Westwood’s Regency Village Theatre.

For The Times, Justin Chang wrote about the movie’s depiction of Alana and Gary’s nascent sort-of romance by saying, “Their youthful disillusionment seems to reflect Anderson’s own industry ambivalence, and the long, loving close-ups he lavishes on Hoffman and Haim, their blemished faces scrubbed of makeup and devoid of glamour, feel like both a pointed corrective to the status quo and a pure expression of love. To that end, Anderson is too honest to grant us a doubt-free happily ever after; as his stories have consistently shown, he has nearly as many doubts about heterosexual romance as he does about Hollywood. But this is an artist for whom skepticism has never stood in the way of passion, and for whom the past is more than just an excuse for a nostalgia trip. With ‘Licorice Pizza’ he has sifted through a haze of wildly embellished tales and half-forgotten memories — and pieced together something that feels more concrete, more achingly, tangibly real, than just about any American movie this year.”

Glenn Whipp went for an afternoon drive around the Valley with Anderson, visiting some of the locations from the movie and talking about the filmmaker’s own lifelong memories of the place. Anderson talked about how working with acting novices like Hoffman and Haim helped keep his own enthusiasm for the project at a high. “We’re trying to have fun. It’s easy to have fun when there’s so many people involved who’ve never been in a movie before. Whatever crusty, old man vibes you might have about the logistics of putting a movie out disappear when you look at their faces: ‘We’ve got a movie coming out!’ ‘Yes. We’ve got a movie coming out.’ It’s true. And I’ve got the water beds in my garage to prove it.”

For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis — always a must-read on Anderson — wrote, “‘Licorice Pizza’ has its seductions, most notably Alana. She’s a fabulous creation, at once down-to-earth real as a friend who grew up in the Valley and as fantastical as a Hollywood dream girl. … This is Haim’s first movie but she has a seasoned performer’s presence and physical assurance. Her expressive range — her face drains and fills as effortlessly as if she were handling a water tap — and humanizing lack of vanity are crucial, partly because she’s a delight to watch and because Hoffman is a frustratingly limited foil.”

For Time, Stephanie Zacharek wrote, “‘Licorice Pizza’ feels pleased with how casual and effortless it is, which is the exact opposite of being casual and effortless. … This is Anderson in his less sculpted mode: ‘Licorice Pizza’ isn’t as dot-every-i meticulous as ‘The Master’ or ‘Phantom Thread,’ and that’s a plus. Still, there are excesses that could have been excised: Bradley Cooper’s extended bit as hotheaded hairdresser and Barbra Streisand beau Jon Peters wears out its welcome. And Anderson can’t resist including not one but two scenes in which John Michael Higgins speaks loud mock Japanese, for alleged laughs — as if retro-mocking white boorishness of the past were in some way a corrective.”

For Slate, Dana Stevens wrote, “‘Licorice Pizza’s’ structure is shaggy and organic. Though the dialogue is too laden with well-placed zingers to have been improvised on-set, there is a sense that the story is bubbling directly out of its creator’s brain, the freewheeling camera work (by Anderson and Michael Bauman) expressing his ideas as directly as a pen put to paper. … ‘Licorice Pizza,’ whose name comes from a real-life chain of SoCal record stores that never figures in the story, is less a movie than a mood, a linked series of vibes. A grouch might say that the film’s momentum slows in the second half, and that its two-hour-and-13-minute running time could have been trimmed by 20 minutes. But in large part thanks to its fresh-faced stars, the charming Hoffman and the wildly charismatic Haim, I’m hard pressed to think of a recent movie whose world I would have liked to stay in longer.”

In a very fun, earnest and vibrantly touching story — not unlike the movie itself — for Thrillist, Esther Zuckerman spoke to Anderson about the fact that the house used in the movie as producer Jon Peters’ house is in fact the one she grew up in.

Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.”

(Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Inc.)

‘House of Gucci’

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on Sara Gay Forden’s book of the same name, “House of Gucci” tells the story of the familial infighting for control of Gucci in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, culminating in the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci orchestrated by his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani. The movie is brash, gaudy and over-the-top with performances to match, as the cast includes Adam Driver and Lady Gaga, alongside Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Jared Leto. The film is in theaters now in general release.

For The Times, Justin Chang wrote, “Leto’s performance — hilarious, sympathetic, full of tragicomic pathos — feels precisely scaled to the demands of a movie that often revels in its own posh, padded vulgarity. I mean that mostly as praise; it’s also a sure sign that Scott and his collaborators — including screenwriters Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna, here adapting Sara Gay Forden’s 2000 book — have fully comprehended their subject. The line between art and trash is always a porous one, in high-end goods as well as cinema. And not unlike some of the totems of luxury on display here, ‘House of Gucci’ is a calculated, highly controlled amalgam of the stylish and the tacky.”

For the New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “The kindest thing I can say about ‘House of Gucci’ — and also the cruelest — is that it should have been an Italian movie. Set mostly in Milan, it spins out a sprawling, chaotic, borderline-operatic tale of family feuding, sexual jealousy and capitalist intrigue, with plenty of drinks, cigarettes and snacks (the carpaccio comes highly recommended). Also cars, shoes, hats, sport coats, handbags, dresses, lingerie — whatever you want! But for all that abundance, something is missing. A lot of things, really, but mostly a strong idea and a credible reason for existing. … The raw material plays as tragedy and farce at the same time.”

For The Ringer, Adam Nayman wrote, “Jared Leto is so outrageously over-the-top as to erase the binary between good and bad acting. He either deserves an Oscar or should be sent to the Hague. Paunchy and pockmarked, stringy and balding, staring out at his costars from beneath layers of prosthetics, Leto commits fully to the bit, which is that in a family defined by a certain bespoke elegance, Paolo wears his failures on his sleeve. … This isn’t just a phony Italian accent — it’s like a meta-commentary on phony Italian accents. ‘I’m a-going to soar, like a pigeon,’ Paolo crows at one point, and of course it’s funny. The question of whether the joke is on the character, the actor, or the audience is open.”

For Vulture, Alison Willmore wrote, “Gucci is a label built on a carefully concocted air of tasteful luxury, but ‘House of Gucci’ is a movie that mostly understands itself to be high-end trash. No one onscreen has a better grasp of this than Lady Gaga. … There’s a touch of [‘Showgirls’’] Nomi Malone to Gaga’s performance, which is fueled by a barely disguised ravenousness, a desire to eat the world in one determined bite. Patrizia is voluptuously vulgar, with her wiggle dresses and ever-more-voluminous hair, the daughter of a trucking entrepreneur whose eyes all but bug out of her head when the shy law student she meets at a party turns out to be heir to a fashion empire. Her calculations are so visible to us, if not to Maurizio, who never stood a chance, that her character achieves a contrary sort of guilelessness. Patrizia is so open about what she wants that it feels unfair to refer to her actions as schemes, and her desire for Maurizio can’t be separated from her desire for the money and power he represents. Gaga is wildly watchable in the role, broad but unwinking, an absolute scream, and the movie only really makes sense when it’s about her.”

Adam Driver, left, stars as Maurizio Gucci, Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci and Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci.”

(Fabio Lovino / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’

Winner of the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival and Romania’s entry for the international feature Oscar, Radu Jude’s “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” is a riotous satire of contemporary issues revolving around the fallout when a schoolteacher (Katia Pascariu) finds a sex tape she made with her husband has made its way online. The film, which was made under COVID-19 restrictions, is playing now in limited release, including at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles.

For The Times, Justin Chang wrote, “‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ [is] a fascinating snapshot of the here and now, an unusually direct example of a nimble, adventurous filmmaker embracing the difficulties of the moment. But it is also something more. Those opening minutes aside, Pascariu’s lower face is concealed for much of her screentime, which makes her ability to telegraph fear, anxiety and frustration all the more impressive. Her performance becomes its own wry commentary on how much we conceal of ourselves in public, how much emotion, passion and raw human messiness we tamp down not just in the service of public health, but in the name of social respectability.”

For the New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Shooting in the summer of 2020, Jude and his team were clearly constrained by the realities of COVID-19, but they also succeeded in turning a bad situation to creative advantage, facing the awfulness and absurdity of the present with wit, indignation and a saving touch of tenderness. … There is no American filmmaker I can think of who tackles our modern-day culture wars and their historical roots with anything approaching Jude’s honesty, wit or intellectual rigor. He’s hardly neutral, but he allows all the arguments to unfold in good faith, in a way that shows the vulnerability of his own worldly, liberal, anti-nationalist position.”

For Mubi, Ela Bittencourt wrote, “Jude takes his comedy very seriously. His true theme is a world gone virally ill, long before the pandemic. Not just viral videos, but the entire postmodern complex, in which everything, from desire and intimacy to history, gets digested, regurgitated and monetized as instant content — thanks to the same digital means that power cinema these days. The film’s mid-section walks viewers through many ills, with anecdotal entries on sex, psychoanalysis, Nazis, the Holocaust and the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Jude, however, doesn’t merge these disjunctive threads into a totalizing whole. Rather than a prophetic Godardian whack, Jude’s prolific, scattershot quotations deliver a quick sardonic jab. When he inserts the final title cards, such as ‘We’ve only kept you a moment,’ they feel like Shakespearean ducking — in the vein of ‘don’t throw tomatoes at performers’ — but also a shrewd signal that proves how well Jude harnesses this moment’s temporal drift: The director acknowledges that we’re watching his movie online and our attentions are straying.”

Katia Pascariu in “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.”

(Magnolia Pictures)