Licorice Pizza

While it's true that Paul Thomas Anderson could direct "Phone Book: The Movie" and it would still end up on my year-end "best of" list, Licorice Pizza conjures up a fascinating relationship between a teenager seemingly wise beyond his years and a twenty-something who just can't seem to figure out how to navigate the real world.

A lot of debate has been stirred up in The Discourse about the appropriateness of the relationship between these two characters. But I feel as though the film is neither the grotesque endorsement of the age gap that its detractors view it as, nor the staunch rebuke of it that some defenders claim it to be. What Licorice Pizza does exceedingly well is give us an utterly compelling pair of characters and allow us to watch as they grow together, apart and together again in a world that expects women to grow up and allows men to stay children forever.