346: The Holdovers

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[00:00:06] 54. Let's get to another 2024 best picture nominee, the ninth one that we've done, 9 out of 10 now, almost done.

[00:00:15] Let's get to the holdovers.

[00:00:18] So, it is directed by Alexander Payne, the great Paul Giamatti, Divine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa,

[00:00:28] Kerry Preston, few others, not a huge cast.

[00:00:32] And the synopsis is a cranky history teacher at a prep school is forced to remain on campus over the holidays with a grieving cook and a troubled student who has no place to go.

[00:00:43] So, Alexander Payne, I haven't talked a lot about him on the show. We did review downsizing which I thought was unusually terrible.

[00:00:51] And I think it's by far his worst movie and I'm glad he's sort of gone back to the indie roots because I think that's his sweet spot.

[00:00:59] But I do really like him in general. I think my favorite is still Sideways.

[00:01:04] And he has a lot of great ones under his belt. So if you are unfamiliar with Alexander Payne, I would check him out for sure.

[00:01:11] I had heard about this one a lot, a lot of buzz when it came out and just never got around to sing until fairly recently.

[00:01:19] But I was very excited to see because I was happy to see Payne back into swinging things. Paul Giamatti and the lead, I think they work great together.

[00:01:29] So overall, I thought it was excellent. It's one of his all time best in my opinion.

[00:01:37] And I think it'll probably continue to go up on rewatches. I'm looking forward to rewatching at some point, but it is sort of a heavy movie.

[00:01:44] So you got to be in the right mood for it. Paul Giamatti is amazing. I always have loved Paul Giamatti and I think he can do anything really.

[00:01:52] And he is excellent in this one of his recent best performances and everybody's really, really good. Divine Randolph and then Dominic Sessa.

[00:02:01] One thing with Alexander Payne that I always tend to connect with is he seems to have a pretty strong sense of melancholy in all of his movies in one way or the other.

[00:02:12] They're usually dealing with abandoned, lost, lonely people who have been broken in their lives and they're just trying to make the most of what they have,

[00:02:21] trying to move on from maybe past mistakes or whatever it might be. And that's front and center in this movie.

[00:02:28] And I think that's something that really hits hard on Alexander Payne just for whatever reason as a real genuine earnest ability to inject those ideas and feelings very earnestly into all of his movies in whatever sort of fashion.

[00:02:43] So I think it's probably one of the best of the nominees. The three characters, the three actors who have already mentioned they're excellent together like them just trying to make

[00:02:56] the most of their time together and because they're basically stuck together and how they help each other out. I think it all comes across like from afar, it could be seen as very or executed very generically, very cheesely, but it's not.

[00:03:12] It hits home, at least it did for me. And the concept and I think everybody can relate to this for sure is Paul G. Mide's character who's this very uptight, strict, needlessly brutal teacher.

[00:03:28] I think everybody's had one of those. I know I have where they grade you so harshly and there's no real forgiveness there. They're like, well, screw it, you get a D plus even though you did a great paper.

[00:03:38] You know, I think we can all think of a teacher in our lives if you haven't yet, you probably will have one or a boss, something like that. And so I love that it's very, very funny, genuinely funny movie.

[00:03:48] Alexander Payne has great comedy, great pacing, great dialogue comedically. And the Divine Randolph's character, her dealing with the loss of her son in the war is very touching the teenager dealing with I won't spoil too much but the twists or surprise of what his father is doing on where he is in his life.

[00:04:14] I think really is very sad and heartfelt but very strong point in the movie. Paul G. Mide dealing with his past and how he got to being at this school and all that it really there aren't any real flaws to the movie aside from it maybe being a little long.

[00:04:32] I think it needed to be to 10. I think it is could have been short maybe a little bit but other than that, it's pretty flawless, I think and it's one of those pain isms that to me, it's something that I think most people can relate to in one way or the other like it's not very distant.

[00:04:51] There's a lot of emotion, both on the surface and underneath. There's a lot of interesting ideas and yeah very great, dramatic drama with humor whatever you want to call it like he has that great middle ground as well so really highly recommend it.

[00:05:07] This one is a great return to form would have been on my top 10 list I think if I'd seen it at that time so yeah that one is a heavy four and a half out of five.