Hey, the Oscar nominations are here. Aren’t you stoked? Yeah, me neither. A lot of friends get really excited, but increasingly these have become less and less significant to me personally, and this year goes way beyond even my usual indifference. Sure, I’ll watch the telecast, but it’s mostly for the bombast and spectacle rather than any actual investment.
As a whole, I’m not entirely certain what Licorice Pizza, the new 70s-set coming-of-age film from Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), amounts to. Pieces are absolutely magical, full of joy and whimsy. Others…are a bit more problematic, at best; downright cringe-inducing at worst. It watches like a movie where the filmmaker has zero checks and balances, able to indulge any and every flight of fancy with no oversight. Which is both a good and bad thing by turns. This freedom allows PTA to indulge himself; the flipside of that is, of course, overindulgence.
