The Holdovers

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Finally......a GOOD movie. The story/script, although not a breakthrough idea, was heartfelt,full and real. The settings were also real and gorgeous (not really a cgi fan) Camera, cinematography, lighting,sound,score....every level made my eyes and ears satisfyingly full. Acting was oscarworthy across the board. Directing was brilliant. Only negative I can come up with is that the pace was a bit slow, but so much of the movie is so focused and so superbly and beautifully made I just sat back and enjoyed it. A very thoughtful substantial and beautiful movie. A rare gem in today's superficial gimmicky movie making world.

I am big fan of director Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Sideways) and of actor Paul Giamatti in particular. Both have teamed up before with marvellous results, but this movie has got 1 problem that made me only rate it with 6 stars though: The bad:the middle part of this story stretches out too long, with several quite tedious scenes, which could have easily been cut out of it without hurting the storyline. I started watching at my watch half way through several times because of this lack of spark and punch. Such a pity! Fortunately this movie picked up momentum again towards the warmhearted Christmas spirited final, but I still will only award this movie with 6 stars (instead of 7) because I got bored at many moments during the somewhat tedious and long middle part. The story: It's about a young student and his teacher, who both are lonely souls and although they cant stand each other at first, eventually slowly do bond with each other during a Christmas holiday. Acting by Paul Giamatti is masterful (as always), BUT some of the other actors fail to impress me. Not the best of director Alexander Payne's work, but definitely still worth a watch, because it left me in my seat with a smile on my face and a feel good Christmas spirit of caring for one another!

Lots of great reviews here. Many people who have seen Sideways seem to be excited that Giamatti has re-teamed with Payne the director. Of course, the film is in no way related to the other movie, except that both were involved and that Sideways has quite a cult following. Unfortunately this is not my type of movie. I'm not saying it's bad. And I'm not saying anything bad about the people who seem to love it. It's just not for me. It's a character driven movie, which is fine, except I didnt bond with any of the characters. And I found the choice of musical tunes throughout to be annoying at best. So if you like drawn out period piece character driven flicks, you may like this one. I didn't love it, but I could see how some might, hence the "5" rating.

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Well, i normaly will not spend more than 20 minutes watching a movie/tv episode, if it has not yet Drawn me in, but due to the high rating and Paul Giamatti, i stuck with it, hoping it would "start up" at some point, but it never did, it just meandered along without ANY real connection from myself, nothing about it engaged me at all. It is lacking throughout and not just in parts, there was nothing to "draw you in", nor FEEL concern for anything going on, or any character. Paul played his part Completely as always, a real quality actor, but even he cannot inspire any real engagement with this movie. I would not pan it, nor guide people away from it, but i am bewildered at the very high rating, over 9 i think when i first looked, now at 8.2 and i expect it will drop further as we get more legitimate ratings from more viewers. It is simply NOT agreat movie at all, which c ertainly a 9 would indicate. If i were to be negative, i'd say it was more like a couple of episodes of a so so TV series and NOT a great movie. I think most watching shall be waiting for it to "take off" as i did, which it will not, and when the more realistic rating of around 6 settles in, people won't have such high expectations. Possibly if some dark humour had been injected into it, may have helped, but as it is, it's fairly uneventful, lacking humour, or anything to really engage the viewer.

On paper it hit its notes, but there was something wrong with it that I could not articulate. Then I realized. It's a bait and switch. They broke the entire concept of the movie. The entire premise is that they are stuck in the school together, to the point where when the helicopter takes off, you feel a sense of dread that they're now alone, trapped together and must make due, must find grace in the discomfort, learn all those lessons. This is a great premise for a film and it must work in that premise. SUDDENLY, they're going out to bars, to parties, to the city, to insane asylums, to bowling alleys. This is is a problem so fundamentally wrong with the movie it sinks the entire thing in my view. To start with, it's lazy, but artistically, it's cowardly. The helicopter taking off now means nothing because they hit the road regardless. Imagine in The Breakfast Club they escape the school and go on a road trip with ten different stops. It's no longer The Breakfast Club then, it becomes Ferris Bueller's Day Off; as in here, in the Holdover, there is no Holdover to speak of. They aren't trapped in the school, they just go wherever they fancy, with this gigantic god-eye copout of 'well we have a field trip fund so let's throw the screenplay out the window'. Bait and switching the premise is one of my great pet peeves in films, and it's a shame because they set out to make a great film but Payne couldn't help it, he is unable to break out this mold of making road-trip films, and there I was refreshed going in that he was trying something new.