Licorice Pizza (2021)

Last time I saw this movie, I was with Aden and Sophie in NYC. It was a cold winter night, and I remember the chill stinging our cheeks as we walked past Lincoln Center and to the subway.

But for those two hours in the theater, basking in the warm glow of PTA's dreamlike 1970s California, we felt warm. We were transported back decades; the production design and costuming playing no small part. We were absorbed in the camera moves, editing, script, acting, and directing of a PTA movie and smiles broke out on our faces as time after time, the movie blessed us with perfect needle drops. I don't think I fully appreciated the movie then. I didn't appreciate how much of a vibe it is; how it invites you to lean back and enjoy the craziness of a remembered or reimagined California. But oh is it fun to live in that world for 2 hours.

Now, 4 years later, I got the opportunity to see this movie on the big screen again. I'm across the world. Multiple apartments later. Multiple jobs later. Friends who have come and gone. I'm in completely different life circumstances, and yet, watching this movie, I was transported back to the warm vibes of PTA's world and, concurrently the person I was when I first saw the movie. I vividly remember walking out of the theater (we thought we were so cool that we were able to catch it in a 70 mm format) and walking down the street, discussing how we felt about the movie.

What I guess I'm trying to say is, movies have this effect, both within the movie itself and from the experience of rewatching a movie, to transport you back to another time. You can revisit places from decades ago, but you can also revisit who you were when you first watched the movie. How you felt and how you feel different now. Who you saw the movie with the first time and the conversations you had about it. Yes, movies are important tools for transporting us to different times and place, to different cultures and religions, to deeper, more hidden crevices of society we otherwise wouldn't be exposed to. And that is a precious gift.

But it is the experience of watching a movie, especially with other people, that gives us such vibrant memories - providing the platform for an all encompassing, engulfing experience that makes it easy, perhaps easier than any other art form, to remember the first experience upon a revisit.

I know this doesn't have much to do with the movie, but seeing this movie in theaters again and feeling and remembering my first time as I was watching, compelled me to write all this down somewhere. What better place than here.

I love movies. I love watching movies in a theater. I love going to movies with friends. And I especially love when a movie is so good, so well realized and so vibrant, that when you rewatch it, you visit another world, another time or place, that you travelled to once before.

Movies are important. But maybe just as important, is the experience of a trip to the theater.