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Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim
in Licorice Pizza |
With last Friday night's viewing of Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza on iTunes, I completed my quest to see all of Oscar-nominated Best Pictures. Incidentally, I've also viewed all of the acting nominees, all the directors and all but one of the Best Original and Adapted Screenplays (The Worst Person in the World is the only one missing). Alana Haim of Pizza should have been nominated for Best Actress. She plays Alana, the 25-year-old young woman in a push-pull romance with Gary, the teenaged former child actor hustling water beds and pinball machines in 1973 LA. Haim beautifully conveys Alana's conflicting desires to find a grown-up life and to cavort with Gary. There were also memorable cameos by Christine Ebersole as a star not unlike Lucille Ball, Harriet Harris as a bizarre talent agent, and Bradley Cooper as a wigged-out Jon Peters, boiling with rage because he's late for his date with Barbra Streisand.
