Film Review: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)
Licorice Pizza , the auteur's ninth feature film, is probably Paul Thomas Anderson's most personal film to date, which is weird when one considers the story he is telling here is someone else's story. The story is set in a 1973 Southern California that is probably more idealized than the actual time and place were - but that's part of what makes the film so goddamn good. Based on the life of former child actor turned movie producer Gary Goetzman, whom Anderson had worked with before going the director route himself, the film is a series of charming vignettes in and around the fringes of Hollywood. Anderson himself had grown up in and around the fringes of Hollywood, but about a decade or so after the setting of this film. That being that, even though the brunt of the scenarios, such as starring in a film with Lucille Ball (played loosely her by Christine Ebersole), or starting a waterbed company and delivering a waterbed to Jon Peter's home (played to the height of...