The Holdovers review: Paul Giamatti shines in a warm, sentimental comedy made for life’s curmudgeons
11 months, 3 weeks ago

The Holdovers review: Paul Giamatti shines in a warm, sentimental comedy made for life’s curmudgeons

The Independent  

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy It’s bad business to have released Alexander Payne’s mournful holiday comedy, The Holdovers, several weeks after Christmas has ended. Payne’s return behind the camera follows his 2017 sci-fi comedy Downsizing, a film largely dismissed by critics, and features a second collaboration with his Sideways star, Paul Giamatti. Giamatti, Sessa, and Randolph share a warm rapport, enveloped by the wistful, vintage aesthetics of Payne’s homage to New Hollywood filmmakers of the Seventies, like Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich – complete with a mono sound mix and custom-made studio logos. Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner.

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History of this topic

The Holdovers: Oscar-nominated film starring Paul Giamatti accused of plagiarism
9 months, 4 weeks ago

The Holdovers: Oscar-nominated film starring Paul Giamatti accused of plagiarism

The Independent  

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Simon Stephenson, the Scottish screenwriter whose credits include Pixar’s critically acclaimed …

Revisiting 'The Holdovers,' which is up for an Oscar along with actor Paul Giamatti
10 months, 2 weeks ago

Revisiting 'The Holdovers,' which is up for an Oscar along with actor Paul Giamatti

NPR  

Revisiting 'The Holdovers,' which is up for an Oscar along with actor Paul Giamatti Paul Giamatti plays a 1970s prep-school teacher reluctantly supervising students with nowhere to go for the Christmas holidays in Alexander Payne's dramedy, The Holdovers. AILSA CHANG, HOST: It's been almost two decades since director Alexander Payne and his star, Paul Giamatti, drank their way through Santa …

How "The Holdovers" writer was inspired by Michelangelo to create a "broken" holy family
10 months, 3 weeks ago

How "The Holdovers" writer was inspired by Michelangelo to create a "broken" holy family

Salon  

Years ago, while visiting Florence, Italy’s famed Uffizi gallery, screenwriter David Hemingson found himself captivated by the famed painting of the holy family known as the Doni Tondo. Helping this along is another inspiration taken from the Doni Tondo, in that Hemingson thinks of Barton’s temporarily vacant Barton school grounds as “a biodome.” “Boarding school is almost like a hermetically …

Paul Giamatti: The Holdovers actor is widely beloved—and misunderstood.
11 months, 2 weeks ago

Paul Giamatti: The Holdovers actor is widely beloved—and misunderstood.

Slate  

“You are the motherfucking Antichrist!” For many moviegoers, their introduction to Paul Giamatti came in 1997, when the then baby-faced actor screamed this line at the shock jock Howard Stern. In Private Parts, Giamatti plays Stern’s boss at radio station WNBC, a tetchy asshole upon whom Stern bestows the memorable name “Pig Vomit.” Driven mad by Stern’s behavior—including phoning Mrs. …

The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti’s Oscar-tipped film makes us root for the underdog
11 months, 3 weeks ago

The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti’s Oscar-tipped film makes us root for the underdog

The Independent  

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Mr Hunham, the worn-down, middle-aged teacher played with such consummate brilliance …

The Holdovers reunites Paul Giamatti with director Alexander Payne in movie about misfits at Christmas
11 months, 4 weeks ago

The Holdovers reunites Paul Giamatti with director Alexander Payne in movie about misfits at Christmas

ABC  

In the era of franchise IP, mid-budget Hollywood "movies for adults" — which often used to come in the shape of the fabled studio indie — have become a dying breed. Back around the turn of the century, these auteur-driven movies were in a boom, thanks to filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell and Alexander Payne, who drew …

Best movies 2023: Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers.
1 year ago

Best movies 2023: Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers.

Slate  

In Slate’s annual Movie Club, film critic Dana Stevens emails with fellow critics—for 2023, Bilge Ebiri, Esther Zuckerman, and Mark Harris—about the year in cinema. That’s a beautiful thing, but it’s also possible the ostensibly happy ending is what kept Poor Things from clawing at my brain the way previous Lanthimos films have. Maybe—just maybe—the reason why some people find …

Meet Dominic Sessa — the rare unicorn of ‘The Holdovers’
1 year ago

Meet Dominic Sessa — the rare unicorn of ‘The Holdovers’

LA Times  

“It’s almost like its own movie script. It’s a crazy story,” actor Dominic Sessa says of being discovered at a boarding school to play the role of a boarding school student in “The Holdovers.” All Dominic Sessa really wanted was to play hockey. He had just finished the fall play of his senior year, Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” when he heard …

The Holdovers review: The Oscar contender that’s destined to be a sadsack Christmas classic.
1 year, 2 months ago

The Holdovers review: The Oscar contender that’s destined to be a sadsack Christmas classic.

Slate  

The Holdovers, the melancholy-yet-lovable eighth film from director Alexander Payne, reunites him for the first time since 2004’s Sideways with his gruff, sardonic muse, Paul Giamatti. * Even the sound is vintage-styled, mixed in mono rather than stereo—a detail I didn’t consciously register upon viewing, but that may account for the déjà vu effect the whole film had on me, …

Review: Bah, humbug! ‘The Holdovers’ is a clunky, phony white-elephant gift of a movie
1 year, 2 months ago

Review: Bah, humbug! ‘The Holdovers’ is a clunky, phony white-elephant gift of a movie

LA Times  

Paul Hunham, the eloquent, embittered human wreck played by Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” is a man of many wretched ailments. As “The Holdovers” morphs from miserablist odd-couple comedy to bittersweet road movie, it aims to remind you, sometimes with a hard nudge, of Hal Ashby classics like “Harold and Maude” and “The Last Detail”; an argument with …

Movie Review: A holiday movie with some bite in Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’
1 year, 2 months ago

Movie Review: A holiday movie with some bite in Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’

Associated Press  

Alexander Payne brings audiences to a New England boarding school in 1970 in “ The Holdovers,” a textured, nostalgic and often funny piece about three lonely and mismatched souls stuck together over Christmas break. With its knowingly retro production titles starting the film, “The Holdovers” lets you settle in and submit to something that could very well have been made …

‘The Holdovers’ trailer: Alexander Payne reteams with Paul Giamatti for wintry heart-warmer
1 year, 5 months ago

‘The Holdovers’ trailer: Alexander Payne reteams with Paul Giamatti for wintry heart-warmer

The Hindu  

Alexander Payne, director of acclaimed films like Sideways, The Descendants and Nebraska, is back with a new film about a grouchy prep school teacher babysitting a bunch of stay-behind students during the winter break. Titled The Holdovers, the film stars Paul Giamatti in the role of the much-disliked teacher. Payne and Giamatti had last collaborated twenty years ago in the …

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