The Holdovers

 

There seems to be a long line of movies about students and teachers at elite boarding schools. From "Goodbye Mr. Chips" to the "Harry Potter" series, something about the confines of elite education seems to fascinate us. Often the stories focus on the conflicts between rich entitled students and their poorer scholarship counterparts. Sometimes it is the ennui that privilege seems to inflict on the rich kids, which an inspirational teacher tries to overcome. Often, the ethical standards of the institution present a conflict with a student's sense of right and wrong, and the story tries to resolve that. "The Holdovers" joins that deep genealogy of academic settings and personal angst.

If you watch the trailer, you will get the premise immediately. Like young Scrooge in the Dicken's story, a student gets left at school during the holidays. In this case it is a student who seems to be thriving in his classes, although struggling with his peers. Newcomer Dominic Sessa plays Angus, a bright but but petulant kid who has been thrown out of three other elite schools and is on the brink of being removed from Barton Academy, the setting of the film in New England.   The teacher who ends up having to watch over the students during the holidays is history instructor Paul Hunham, played by the great Paul Giamatti. Giamatti has been largely engaged in television wok for the last few years, and I am unfamiliar with the shows he has been spending time on. I welcome him back to the big screen because he is a welcome presence as a dramatic actor with a gift for reaching the humor in even deep drama. That is exactly what he is doing here, and I think his performance will be one that is recognized by the end of the year honors that will soon be upon us. Mr. Hunham is an acerbic curmudgeon, who can see the faults in others and is not blind to the ones in himself. 

Both of the main characters eventually get left together with the occasional influence of a third character, Mary Lamb, the cafeteria manager of the school played by  Da'Vine Joy Randolph from "Only Murders in the Building". The film is set in 1970 and Mary worked at the school chiefly to allow her son to attend, but is now a grieving mother who lost her child to the Vietnam War. So you have a disaffected student, a bitter teacher and a depressed mother, stuck at the school together for a two week period. Maybe it sounds like there will be a lot of well worn plot points as these three people manage to bond and help one another through this period, you would be right in assuming that. You would be wrong though in thinking that the film will be trite as a consequence. It is really much cleverer than the set up. Each of the three characters reveal histories that give us insight into their conditions. The plot does not play out in the obvious ways that have been set down for it, and there is enough humor in the characters to keep us from wallowing in their tragedies.

In our modern film era, filled with superheroes, paid assassins, and horror premises that sound more interesting than they are, it is such a joy to have an adult drama to take in with an audience. We cab see a lot of what is coming in the story, but not everything. We have seen these kinds of characters before, but they are well played and still engaging. And the time period of the film reflects the characters and the emotional tone of the story, no anachronisms here. This is not a post modern twist on "The Dead Poets Society", it is instead a counterpart story. Characters, like people in the real world, gain insight into others and as a consequence into themselves as well. I think that is a universal concept that can be told in a movie on a repeated basis, as long as the characters are interesting, and here they are.

Alexander Payne has made some excellent films in the last twenty years or so. "Sideways" is a jewel, "Nebraska" was excellent, and "the Descendants" while not my favorite, was widely respected and worth your effort. His previous film "Downsizing" was an apparent misfire, the word of mouth on it was so bad that I never bothered to see it. "The Holdovers" seems to be a return to form and for my point of view, one of the best films of the year. 

San Andreas

I understand the commerce behind a film like this. Big action, a big star, and over the top visual sequences make money. Look, I put down my twelve bucks so I guess I should not complain too much, except what does it say about me and the rest of humanity when we watch disaster porn? Are we confronting our fears and our own mortality or are we revealing in the destruction and enjoying watching millions of people die? I just can't anwser. I feel a little dirty but it is also such a stupid movie that I feel silly for feeling guilty, talk about mixed emotions.

Southern California is the only home I have ever known, and I know that we are all going to be very unhappy when the "Big One" does show up. I rode out the 1971 quake in Sylmar, the 87 Whittier Narrows Quake that killed my hometown theater, and the 94 Northridge quake which made the area sit up and beg. Every once in a while we get a good sized movement of the earth that reminds us that stuff is happening below our feet. This movie wants to bitch slap you into alertness and then make you care about five people while the whole west coast is going to hell in a handbasket. If anyone is better prepared as a result of seeing this, that would be a good thing. The problem is that this movie suggests that we are all pretty much screwed unless we have a helicopter, a plane and a boat at our disposal. Also, pack Dwayne Johnson in your EQ kit because mere mortals are not going to survive without this kind of hero.

The former "Rock" has been a movie star for fifteen years now. He is in one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, and he gets better as an actor each time out while keeping the charisma that made him a star wrestler before he moved over to the silver screen. He loads this unbelievably derivative story on his broad shoulders and powers though it as if it were Shakespeare. He does not play it camp and he does a credible job playing the hero that everyone will need in a disaster. If Liam Neeson and others are the Old Guy fantasy of competence, Johnson is right there with them, assuming the old guys look like Arnold Schwarzenegger reborn.

Take three parts "Earthquake", one part "The Towering Inferno", one part "The Poseidon Adventure", throw in a dash of "2012" and "The Day After" and you have this movie. Match it with state of the art visual effects to depress the hell out of anyone who remembers 9/11 and you will see what I mean. This movie is cheesy as hell but also sadly familiar. I spent hours watching tsunami videos after the Japanese disaster a few years ago, and I felt like a gawker at the scene of a car accident, but still not able to look away. The dramatic action scenes in this movie still manage to involve you because the main characters are likable and we have followed them through the whole story, but look around and there are a hundred other stories that end in tragedy every time our leads make it thorough ( which they would never do it this was real.)

Paul Giamatti is credible as a Cal Tech scientist, and he adds a little gravitas to the proceedings but the whole scenerio is so over the top that in the long run it does not matter. If you can swallow your self loathing and just load up on popcorn, you will be moderately entertained. If you are at all conflicted about the idea, then maybe you should wait for the next comic book movie, where it is easier to laugh off the ludicrious amount of destruction as just being a movie.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

We have a new winner in the race to be the weakest Spider-Man movie ever. Leading the pack for seven years was the nearly universally reviled "Spider-Man 3".  While it was certainly the least favorite of mine, I have never been a hater like so many others. It was a disappointment and at times a little silly. What it never was was boring. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" is just that. Equally bloated with plot elements and villains, but managing to be entertaining for only about a third of it's more than two hour running time. The second entry in the reboot of a series that probably did not need to restart so soon, this film will be the biggest disappointment of the year to geeks and movie executives everywhere. The comic book fans will pick it apart for it's flaws and the money men will second guess how they took a sure thing and turned it into this.

There are long stretches in the movie where we get an ill defined domestic drama featuring Peter Parker, His girlfriend Gwen and his Aunt May. This is not what people turn out for. The back and forth love affair has a couple of sweet moments, but it all feels pointless and without any real motivation. If Peter is going to make the decision to stop seeing Gwen, why does he spend all his time following her around and mooning over her? Why does Gwen take him back when she knows how he is not able to make a commitment? Why would anyone care is the two of them have created no stake for the audience to begin with? Maybe if I had re-watched the last film right before seeing this one, it might have helped, but I don't think so.

The opening chase and battle with a barely recognizable and incoherent Paul Giamatti as a Russian gangster who may figure in the plot later, was sadly divisive for me. The way it is shown, from camera positions and Peter's perspective and then at street level if gracefully imagined. It just doesn't look very good. The animated CGI images are blurry around the edges, the colors look weak and it seemed flat. It is possible that this resulted from the effort to make this a 3D spectacular, but I did not see it in 3D and it looked cheap. The spitting gibberish uttered by Giamatti in the opening is Shakespeare compared to the "Ve av vays of making u talk" accented dialogue that comes from the "scientist" who is supposed to contain the villain "Electro" later in the film.  It was literally embarrassing to listen to this cliche speak from the screen. This movie feels slapped together in a way that "Spider-Man 3" might have been, but at least there, the seams were only visible when Peter Parker goes dark. In this movie, every villain is half thought out, every Peter Parker domestic problem is written as if it were important but plays like it is not, and all of the action scenes are less than exciting.

I think Andrew Garfield is a great choice for the part. He and Emma Stone have a nice chemistry, but their story pales in comparison to the Mary Jane material that was explored in the first series of films. The reason it does not live up to it's potential is that it was underwritten. The conflict they have should play out with more emotional investment and it is instead brittle and conventional. I am a softie when it comes to emotions. I love those Spielberg moments that deliberately try to pull a tear from your eye. A good commercial or a dog story on the news or even a piece of gossip about a kid in my wife's class can make be sniffle. The resolution of this story left me unmoved. I'm told that fans of the Spider-Man comics think the Gwen Stacy story line is the apex of the emotional journey that Peter takes. I just sat there, stone faced and wondered why it wasn't working.

There are some easy bad choices to point to. Jamie Fox gets to play nerd, but he doesn't play an engineer as a geek, he plays it as an idiot. His Max Dillon practically drools when showing how awkward he is supposed to be. It is a caricature that makes a simple hero worshiping fan into a simpleton. "Electro" could use some motivation, but the psychological roots of his rage are conveniently skipped over.    Harry Osborn is a different matter. The roots of his problems are better explained, and they are set up well. It is the manner in which he steps so quickly into the role of the "Goblin" that feels rushed. Had they left the set up for a third film and waited for this character to appear, I think it could have worked much better. In this situation, it seems like they just wanted a movie of at least two hours so they grafted an additions element to flesh it out. The "Rhino" character and Giamatti's role are throw away bits which added nothing to the proceedings. If you stick around for the credits, you will get another example of the slap dash nature of the movie. In an attempt to tie in the Marvel Universe, there is an insert that has no context, no connection, and no reason for being there. It raises some interesting questions about cross promotion, but it had nothing to do with what we just spent two and a quarter hours living through. The whole enterprise is a letdown.