Paul Thomas Anderson spent years dreaming of adapting Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, a novel published in 1990. He then filmed his adaptation of that novel nearly two years ago. Yet somehow, One Battle After Another, Anderson’s latest masterpiece, feels like it was made expressly with the headlines of the last few months in mind. It also feels eerily prescient, showing us a twisted, fun-house mirror version of the depravity to which the United States will likely sink in the coming years under the hideous Trump regime.
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Though very different in story and theme, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is destined to play on a double bill in repertory theaters and stoners’ home theaters alongside Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Both films are fantastic examples of the hangout movie: light on plot, heavy on atmosphere, these are movies that are more about an aimless, meandering pace and watching the characters simply be and not necessarily do. Tarantino himself coined the term to describe perhaps the first ever hangout movie, Rio Bravo.
Other examples include Fast Times at Ridgemont High and American Graffiti – Anderson has credited both as major inspirations for Licorice Pizza – as well as Anderson’s own Boogie Nights and Magnolia.
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