EL SEGUNDO HERALD December 9, 2021 Page 3
Eagles Finding Their
Way as Seasons Begin
By Gregg McMullin
Lady Eagles Working
The high school basketball season is
Hard in Defeats
underway, and both girls’ and boys’ teams
struggle to find their way. The soccer schedule
The early season defeats for the girls;
basketball team have been an exhilarating
combination of thrilling and disappointing.
Struggling starts led to comeback attempts that
led to narrow defeats recently to top teams,
including fourth-ranked and undefeated Sherman
Oaks, Notre Dame (7-0), which limits
See Eagles, page 6
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is upon us, and both teams are poised
to have successful seasons. The girls’ water
polo team has started season 1-1 against two
powerhouse programs. Each of the teams can
have winning seasons, but they’ll have to
work through some early season adjustments.
Nicole Ungaro was instrumental in bringing her team back from a 15 point deficit.
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No assembly required
Thus, the perfect holiday gift.
Entertainment
Licorice Pizza is Cinematic Bliss
That Will Overjoy Movie Lovers
By Ryan Rojas for Cinemacy.com
You might not think that the same person
who wrote and directed such serious-sounding
American dramas as 2007’s There Will Be
Blood and 2012’s The Master would also
make a movie a silly and sweetly-named as
Licorice Pizza.
But with his ninth feature film, Paul Thomas
Anderson delivers a film that’s as funny and
heartfelt a film as he’s made to date. A comingof
age story centered around young love set
in the 70s-era San Fernando Valley, Licorice
Pizza (now playing in select theaters before
opening wide on Christmas day) is cinematic
bliss that will overjoy movie lovers.
After seeing her from afar on school picture
day, 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman)
falls instantly in love with 25-year-old
Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Gary immediately
pursues the somewhat older woman, who
instantly laughs off his innocently expressed
advances with incredulous disbelief. He’s
sweet and sharp, but in her eyes he’s also just
a doe-eyed boy.
But Alana is also lost and wandering in
her own life. Through the continued interest
that the earnest Gary shows, she starts to see
that beyond his charismatic childishness lies
another young person of pure-hearted intention
and entrepreneurial ambition, which leads
the pair to embark on adventures of all kinds
throughout the San Fernando Valley.
Paul Thomas Anderson has shown his talent
for directing some of the biggest movie stars in
the world, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin
Phoenix, and Adam Sandler. In Licorice Pizza,
he casts two young talents who have never acted
in a movie of any kind before. It’s a bold and
unorthodox move for anyone making a movie,
let alone for one with a sizable budget and
Oscars chatter. But being a master of modern
cinema, Anderson’s intuitions are exactly on
the money with his lead casting choices.
Playing Gary is Cooper Hoffman, son of
the late Academy Award-winning actor Philip
Seymour Hoffman (also one of Anderson’s
regular actors). The young Hoffman channels
his late father’s cherubic charisma and brings
an irresistable charm to Gary, who starts out
as a childhood actor and ends as having been
both a waterbed salesman and pinball store
manager.
But stealing the show is first-time actor
Alana Haim, whose center Licorice Pizza orbits
around over the course of its 2 hours 13 minutes
runtime. Rock fans will recognize her as the
youngest of the all-sisters rock band Haim, but
here she makes her feature film acting debut,
to impressive acclaim. Her performance is one
that holds her own against some of the other
real movie stars in the film, including against
Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and Sean Penn.
Hoffman and Haim’s effortless performances
give the film a laidback and lighthearted vibe,
making the watch so heartfelt and hilarious.
The Boogie Nights director Anderson himself
has said that American Graffiti and Fast Times
at Ridgmont High were among Licorice Pizza’s
main influences, and their adolescent adventure
natures can be seen here. It also has the
artistic ambitions of channeling a time that
the director knows and wishes to re-create
so well, much like Tarantino’s Once Upon a
Time... In Hollywood did for the end of Los
Angeles’s sixties era.
Beyond its all-around enjoyability, Licorice
Pizza further advances Paul Thomas Anderson’s
filmmaking style and voice as a director, which
is entirely exciting to see at this stage of his
career. And, the film is quite simply one of
the best looking films of the year as well
(Anderson again hops behind the camera as
cinematographer). I saw the film projected on
70mm film at Westwood’s The Regent theater,
and if you’re able to see the film that way too,
I’d recommend trying to do so. Seeing such a
beautifully shot, hilarious, and heartfelt film
will make you remember why we fall in love
with movies.
2 hours 13 minutes. ‘Licorice Pizza’ is rated
R for language, sexual material, and some drug
use. Now playing in select theaters and opens
everywhere on December 25th. •
Film Review
Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature film, ‘Licorice Pizza.’ Photo Courtesy of MGM Studios.
Ryan Rojas