OSCAR-NOMINATED for best picture, direction, and screenplay, Licorice Pizza is a story of first love between a 15-year-old kid and a woman of 25 who’s working at his high school. From their first conversation, Gary (Cooper Hoffman) pushes for a date, which Alana (Alana Heim), resists aggressively, but having already become a minor TV and film star and successful entrepreneur, he’s soon able to charm her. Given his age, though, she just wants to be his friend; he, on the other hand, recognizes his future wife. From this conflict, an awkward romance emerges in adventures involving memorable appearances by Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and John Michael Higgins, each playing an older absurdly macho/sexist type.
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Pizza is set in the San Fernando…