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The Holdovers -- a review

It’s always a joy to watch someone who’s a master at their work, whether it’s a musician, an artist, or an actor. Most great actors make it look easy--which is not to say that I think acting is an easy job. I know from personal experience that acting is very hard. It’s a skill that the talented make look very easy, and one of the most talented actors working today is Paul Giamatti.

If you’ve watched some movies over the past few years, chances are very good that you’ve already seen Paul Giamatti. He was the jittery earthquake expert in San Andreas, the sympathetic police chief in The Illusionist, and as the titular John Adams (a part that got him the Emmy and a Golden Globe) in the 2008 HBO series of the same name. Recently, I saw Paul Giamatti in the superb The Holdovers, a movie that I wasn’t planning on writing up, but I kept thinking about it--and all of its characters--long after I saw it.

In The Holdovers, Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a teacher at a fancy prep school for boys. Hunham teaches his favorite subject, ancient history, and has a nasty reputation among his students for being too uptight and harsh. Over the two-week holiday season, when the school releases its students to their homes and families, Hunham gets stuck with babysitting a group of students who are unable to go home and must stay at the school--in other words, they’re the Holdovers of the film’s title.

While this may sound like one of those sappy Hallmark movies (“Mr. Hunhum is taught the true meaning of Christmas!”), take heart in that it’s directed by Alexander Payne, who worked with Giamatti before, on Sideways. Thanks to Payne’s steady and assured direction, The Holdovers manages to be a fascinating character study without devolving into any Hallmark sap, or the usual hyper-dopiness of the typical popcorn comedy. The cast is rounded out by the equally excellent Dominic Sessa, as one of the Holdover students, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who won a well-deserved Oscar for her role as Mary, the cafeteria manager grieving her son, who was killed in Vietnam.

In addition to the wonderful performances by the entire cast, the film’s production design is so good, so well-detailed, that it didn’t just evoke the year 1970 for me, it actually felt like it was a film that was made in 1970. The framing of the shots, the very cinematography, the movie’s titles, all wonderfully recreates the late 60s/early 70s aesthetic that made me feel like I was completely in a bygone era like no other film has. So if you want to watch a masterful actor flexing in an enthralling drama, give The Holdovers a shot. --SF

I saw The Holdovers on the Amazon Prime streaming service, but it can be rented digitally, and is also available on physical media.

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