Licorice Pizza ***1/2

Licorice Pizza, the latest from director Paul Thomas Anderson, returns to the terrain of the San Fernando Valley, the setting of many of his movies. Anderson's filmography is coming into focus as a history of California from the burgeoning oil field days of There Will Be Blood to the millennial unease of Magnolia.  Licorice Pizza is set around the late Nixon era of 1973-74, the oil crisis figures into one of the vignettes. The film stars newcomer Copper Hoffman as 15-year-old Gary Valentine, an aspiring actor and entrepreneur. Alana Haim plays "Alana Kane", an aimless 20-something exploring various paths to life. Neither nostalgic nor revisionist, Anderson seemingly cobbled together a litany of '70s Valley lore in a film about youth, boredom, and creativity. 

Gary's a highly motivated extrovert with self-sabotaging tendencies, a character out of Mark Twain transplanted to the 20th Century. He's a child actor transitioning to teen roles, while also trying to launch small businesses, including a waterbed store. His "meet cute" with Alana who volunteers at his High School, the both strike a chemistry despite their age difference - an issue the film goes to great lengths to tread carefully (not to the satisfaction of many reviewers). Alana and Gary form a friendship, she helps Gary with his business ventures (skillfully driving a delivery truck) to working on a political campaign. Anderson loves to center his movies around intense relationships, whether it's between two men in The Master or the May-December romance in Phantom Thread, and Licorice Pizza is no exception. 

A colorful tapestry of the era is painted with many notables appearing including Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits, and Sean Penn making memorable appearances. Their roles draw upon Hollywood mythology, I can imagine Anderson being privy to the endless anecdotes he surely heard growing up in the valley (his father Ernie Anderson was a fixture of early television). The script and pacing of the film bear their influences from the lo-fi mode of The Rockford Files and the sun-drenched California of Hal Ashby's Shampoo. But I don't read Licorice Pizza as nostalgic per se. It's more like a time machine trip, witnessing a little of everything including the rough hewn edges, as a subplot alluding to Taxi Driver makes clear. Those seeking definitive statement about the 1970s will be disappointed, instead Anderson returned to the familiar confines of the Valley as an exploration of memory and mythmaking. 

Boogie Nights (1997) ****

If Hard Eight was a throwback the days of New Hollywood in the tradition of Scarecrow or California Split, Boogie Nights takes a more epic approach. Spanning the late 1970s from the early 1980s, the story follows various figures in the adult film industry gathered around charismatic director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). It would be easy to blurb Boogie Nights as the ultimate synthesis of Altman and Scorsese, while that's not completely wrong, Paul Thomas Anderson continued to develop themes he would return to again and again, specifically alternate family structures and an identification with  the outsider.

In a star making role, Mark Wahlberg is Eddie Adams who becomes pornstar Dirk Diggler. The story opens with Eddie working as a busboy at a nightclub where adult film stars frequent, Horner discovers Eddie's physical gift that will make him famous. In one of many memorable sequences, Eddie's introduced to Horner's world at a never ending poolside party. Cocaine and beautiful people are everywhere with "Spill the Wine" playing in the background. The fantastical world of the 1970s adult film industry is countered by Eddie's dull middle class life and a mother who rejects him outright. Wahlberg convincingly portrays an innocent who develops an inflated ego destined to bring about an epic downfall.

Other luminaries in the cast included Julianne Moore as starlet Amber Waves, John C. Reilly as Dirk's sidekick Reed Rothchild, Don Cheadle as Buck Swope, and Heather Graham as Rollergirl. Anderson also highlights the era of filmmaking by also making the crew supporting characters including William H. Macy as Little Bill, Ricky Jay as editor, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a sound operator. The ensemble cast manages to create an enduring tapestry. 

Anderson loves his characters and that's part of the enduring power of the film. It's not a jokey picture about the adult film industry or the people who work within it. There's empathy in every frame. Nine years before Boogie Nights, Anderson directed a mockumentary shot on video entititled The Dirk Diggler Story, which takes a satirical approach to the subject matter, I suspect was inspired by trashy news magazine shows of the era. When Scotty J makes a sexual advance on Diggler while drunk the moment plays as awkward and tragic, Anderson lets the camera linger on Scotty as he weeps in the car. The entire cast does a great job of fostering the empathy - Julianne Moore at a custody hearing or Don Cheadle in the middle of a hold up. Even the now famous "Jessie's Girl" scene towards the end with Alfred Molina devolves into tragicomic violence that's both heartbreaking and terrifying in its own unique way.

Boogie Nights also suggests some of the larger themes Anderson would explore in the future, an interest in systems and the mysterious forces that move them. As Horner explains to Diggler, the movies are all about making money. The organized crime funding the films is alluded to but peripheral to the story. The changing technology from film to video allows the films to be made quicker and cheaper. There's also the idea of being outside of society - the thrill and cost of it. 

Visually impressive , funny and tragic, while moving at a kinetic pace Boogie Nights has aged well.

Hard Eight ***1/2 (1996)

Hard Eight opens with the image of a forlorn looking young man sitting outside a diner entrance with his head hung down. Thus, begins the first feature length film from Paul Thomas Anderson.

Originally titled Sydney and loosely based on Anderson's short film Cigarettes and Coffee (both starred Philip Baker Hall), Hard Eight is not so much a story about redemption, but one about loyalty and survival. 

An imposing, but genial, figure Sydney invites John to join him for breakfast and offers to help him out. Sydney teaches John how to manipulate slot machines and the two forge a bond. Sydney knows how the world works - and his own limitations. He takes a risk management approach to everything. Everything from business relationships to crap games to fashion choices are governed by principles, it all comes down to minimizing the losses.

When the story jumps ahead two years Sydney and John are in a de facto partnership. Anderson tends to cast Reilly as a well meaning simpletons, his naivete both a strength and weakness. Hall played Richard Nixon in Secret Honor, one of Anderson's favorite films. In Hard Eight he's playing a more benevolent version of Nixon, a figure with a tempered strength barely veiling a haunted darkness. 

Their partnership is complicated with the entrance of Jimmy and Clementine. Jimmy works in security and is a small time hustler on the side. Clementine is a waitress/call girl John falls for. Jackson and Paltrow were up and coming stars at the time. Jackson delivers a nuanced performance with his suave intensity, while Paltrow brings a humanity to a tropey type of role. 

Now eight films into his career (with one in post-production), Anderson loves to subvert the family structure, focused on the intricacies of these relationships and how they evolve over the passage of time. After John and Clementine get married they get themselves into a dicey situation of their own doing. When called in to help, Sydney is faced with agonizing decisions. The scene in the hotel room is impressively acted and rippling with tragedy, the real climax of the movie (the denouement plays out with a fatalistic melancholy.)

A keen character study of characters on the fringes sometimes at odds and sometimes helping each other out, Hard Eight is a throwback to New Hollywood cinema with its beautiful losers and regal tones.