The Holdovers

Posted on November 2, 2023 at 5:25 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, some drug use and brief sexual material
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, marijuana
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril, teen scuffles, references to wartime death, grief, and loss
Diversity Issues:	Economic and racial diversity a theme of the movie, mental illness
Date Released to Theaters:	November 3, 2023

Barton is one of those posh boarding schools weighted with the history of generations of highly privileged, casually arrogant, hormonally charged teenager boys. “The Holdovers” takes place there over the Christmas holidays of 1969-70. Barton has buildings with just the slightest touch of casusually arrogant shabbiness found only where there are multiple generations of wealth and status who understand it’s much snobbier not to rush to fix and replace everything. And of course the buildings are surrounded by snowy expanses.

The faculty members have the crucial pedigree of having gone to Barton. This, of course, inspires respect and courtesy from the students. No it doesn’t! The students barely respect their prestigious and wealthy parents, but even they rank higher than someone who is still at Barton, decades after graduation. Perhaps the faculty member held most in contempt is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), who has three strikes against him. He looks and smells weird. He teaches a class on Ancient Greece, which the students find useless and monumentally boring. And he is incorruptible and brutally strict. Even his former student, now the school’s headmaster, is furious with him for refusing to give the son of a powerful and wealthy donor a better grade, costing him his college admission.

That is how Hunham gets stuck with staying at the school over winter break, overseeing the students whose parents cannot or will not let them come home. They’re called the holdovers. The students are miserable, especially when they learn that they all have to bunk together in the infirmary because the heat to the dorms has been shut off, and that Hunham has a rigorous schedule of study and exercise planned for them. Everyone else has gone home for the holidays except for Mary Lamb, the head chef, who will be cooking for them. She is in mourning for her son, recently killed in Vietnam. He was a Barton graduate who could not get a draft deferment like his classmates because they could not afford college tuition. And she is played by an exceptionally moving Da’Vine Joy Randolph, so good in “Dolomite Is My Name” and briefly glimpsed this month in “Rustin” as Mahaliah Jackson.

We’ve all heard about the best-laid plans going awry. And I’m sure we’ve all experienced that terrible plans tend to go awry, too. So before too long, the other holdovers have been whisked away, all that are left are Hunham, Mary, and one smart, rebellious, deeply grieving, and extremely angry student who would have been graduating if he had not been kicked out of three other schools. That is Angus Tully, played with exactly that mix of qualities by newcomer Dominic Sessa.

Director Alexander Payne likes to make movies about people who are extremely passionate about issues others do not take too seriously. In “Election,” it’s a high school election. Who can forget one of the great moments in movie history, when one student calls out the ones who care about it. And we all remember this film’s star, Paul Giamatti, getting way too passionate about his disdain for merlot. In “Nebraska,” a senior citizen is over-committed to the idea he has won a sweepstakes.

Here, the always-brilliant Giamatti gives one of the best performances of the year as a kind of tribute to the bitter boarding school classics teacher in “The Browning Version,” and something of a classics version of a Miniver Cheevy, the only way he can make any sense of his lonely, disappointed, unappreciated life is to wrap himself up in a notion of antiquity that is vastly more honorable or at least understandable than what he has. In his mind, every failed student his his “no, in thunder!” to the weak ambiguities and moral compromises and overall unfairness of the modern world. The students — and the other faculty — may be younger, more handsome, richer, more confident, more popular, and more privileged than he is, but Hunham can still feel superior about what he has decided matters more, like his fondness for the the Meditation of Marcus Aurelius.

Mary, Hunham, and Angus each in their own way stuck, have experiences, adventures, mistakes, confidences, and expanded understandings over the course of the holidays. Each scene is a small gem, the ensemble work is as good as it gets, the screenplay by David Hemingson is smart, funny, and touching, and the superb cinematography by Eigil Bryld captures the chilly landscape of the almost-deserted school and the warmth of some of the other locations. This is one of the best films of the year, with career best work by all involved.

Parents should know that this film has very strong language, some peril and injury, family conflicts, mental illness, loss and grief, drinking and drunkenness, smoking, and some drug use.

Family discussion: What should the teachers in charge of students left behind over the holidays do? What are the differences between the time period of the movie and today?

If you like this, try: “The Browning Version” and its remake — both good, but I prefer the original with Michael Redgrave

Dumb Money

Posted on September 14, 2023 at 5:15 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use
Profanity:	Constant very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and brief drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 15, 2023
Date Released to DVD:	November 13, 2023

Crazy times create crazy events. There has seldom been a crazier time in the United States than the early months of the pandemic and there has seldom been a crazier series of events in the modern history of investing than the time a group of small individual investors with very little capital took on some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on Wall Street and they kind of won. Now that sounds like a movie, and, for the second time, it is.

First there was the documentary, Eat the Rich: the GameStop Saga. And now, the feature film, “Dumb Money,” with an all-star cast, a smart screenplay by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, and lively direction from Craig Gillespie. The movie does a good job of conveying the intricate details of investing and finance in the context of a movie that maintains a heightened tone through sharply executed editing, provocative needle-drops on the soundtrack (beginning with WAP), and minimal exposition.

In very sharp contrast to the music on the soundtrack, Paul Dano plays the central figure, mild-mannered Keith Gill, who lives with his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and their baby daughter in a modest home in Brockton, Massachusetts. Like a movie superhero, he has a secret identity. By day he was a financial analyst with MassMutual. By night he had not one but two personas, one on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets (DeepF***ingValue) and one on YouTube (Roaring Kitty). In both, he talked about stocks he liked and he revealed his own trades. In January 2021, he announced that he had invested in 50,000 shares and 500 call options for GameStop, the store that sells video games in malls. Most investors, including Wall Street billionaires, thought GameStop was going to go bankrupt. The US was still in pre-vaccine pandemic lockdown, though GameStop somehow got listed as an essential business because it sold some computer peripherals, so the stores were still open. But Keith explained his reasons for thinking the stock, trading at under $4 a share, was undervalued.

The Wall Street billionaires also put their money where their mouths were and bet against the company by going “short,” meaning they would make money if the stock went down. Normally, they would have succeeded. But nothing in this story was normal. It was a perfect storm. First, the pandemic shut everything down and made people feel even more mistrustful of big institutions than they were before. This was especially true of the people of Keith’s generation, who were in school on 9/11 and were entering the job market just as the financial meltdown hit the economy with no consequences for the people who caused it. Second, social media made it possible for anyone, like Keith for example, to express views on platforms that were as accessible as traditional media. And it made it possible for followers to support each other and bring in more. Gill went viral. Third, thanks to a new app with no fees, buying and selling stock and even complicated securities like puts and calls (options) was suddenly as easy as sending a text. And fourth, people were stuck at home. They felt stuck in an unfair world. They did not have access to complex investment securities analysis about big, complicated corporations. But they could understand Roaring Kitty, and they could understand GameStop.

And then, Roaring Kitty. People followed his recommendations because he showed them that he was using his own money, because he was an outsider and therefore more like them, because that trading app on their phones was called Robin Hood and trades were “free,” and, this is the key point, after a while, when it was clear that they were costing the Wall Street short sellers billions as their purchases made the stock go up, they were just as happy to be beating the mega-wealthy as they were to be making thousands, tens of thousands, and in Keith’s case, millions for themselves. The trading app was named Robin Hood, which sounded anti-Wall Street. These new investors came up with a new meme-able term: “stonks,” meaning “we’re doing it our own way and it is more about the fun than about making money.” Their loss is almost entirely limited to their modest investments while the short sellers risk losses one television commentator (in real-life archival footage) calls “infinity.”

Gillespe has a sure hand with a chaotic story, giving us just enough information to follow what is happening without weighing us down with the details of finance. Schuker Blum and Angelo have a sharp sense for telling detail. One of the investors is a GameStop employee (Anthony Ramos) with a bureaucratic boss. We get a glimpse of the gulf between the MBAs at headquarters sending out lists about which products have the highest profit margins (“push the loyalty card!”) and the reality of the tiny shop in the otherwise-empty mall. Other investors include a nurse and single mother (America Ferrara) and a pair of debt-ridden college students played by Talia Ryder and Myha’la. Sebastian Stan appears as Robin Hood co-founder Vladimir Tenev. He claims that they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street and his coyness about how they make money when they do not charge a transaction fee turns out to be very significant when Robin Hood’s connection to another player in this story comes out.

There’s an “Empire Strikes Back” element when the people with billions at risk start playing hardball. But Gill understands that Wall Street is overlooking the app investors the way they look the customers of GameStop and his followers, dazzled by their gains and thrilled by schadenfreude. If they had not felt that they were being treated like losers for so long, the win would not mean as much.

The superb cast includes Clancy Brown and Kate Burton as Keith’s parents and Pete Davidson as his slacker brother, whose job in the movie is to contrast and target for exposition. Nick Offerman is excellent as billionaire Ken Griffin and Seth Rogen is in top form as Gabe Plotkin, the guy whose highly leveraged bet against GameStop turns out to be a monumental mistake. In the beginning of the film, his casual entitlement in talking to a contractor who is supposed to be tearing down a house so Plotkin can have a tennis court is in sharp contrast to his unraveling as things go south. You can see the real Plotkin’s testimony here. (Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s now an owner of the Hornets.) There are a dozen clever details that give the story texture, from the recreation of the stonk memes to the coaching for the zoom testimony to a Congressional committee. (You can see Gill’s testimony here.)

It’s entertaining and thought-provoking. With any luck, it will inspire other Gills to find what the experts overlook, which is, after all, how capitalism works.

Parents should know that this film has non-stop strong and vulgar language, spoken by the characters and on the soundtrack, including the n-word. Characters drink alcohol and briefly smoke marijuana and there is a bawdy, sexualized game at a college party.

Family discussion: Who would you trust to give you investment advice? Why did so many people trust Keith?

If you like this, try: the “Eat the Rich” documentary, the book by Ben Mezrich, and “The Big Short” (Note a brief appearance by the real-life character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort)

Bottoms

Posted on August 24, 2023 at 5:57 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Graphic violence including punching, martial arts, some disturbing images, some "comic" deaths
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 25, 2023

“Bottoms” is a cheerfully deranged take on the classic high school underdog story and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It’s a twisted take on the classic story of teenagers who want to have sex and be popular. Usually, that story is about boys. Almost always, it is about heterosexuals. This time, in a film written by director Emma Seligman and star Rachel Sennott, it is about two queer BFFs, not romantic partners, and the title comes from their status at the bottom of the ultra-hierarchy of their school. It is not because they are gay; lots of gay kids are popular. It is because they are “gay, ugly, and untalented,” at least from the narrow perspective of high school.

They both have impossible crushes. PJ (Sennott) yearns for Brittany (Kaia Gerber, with the supermodel bearing of her mother, Cindy Crawford). Josie (breakout star Ayo Edebiri) longs for the lovely Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), who is the girlfriend of the school’s star quarterback, Jeff (breakout star Nicholas Galitzine).

No one is even pretending to care about them or their education, including their principal (Wayne Pére) and their teacher, Mr. G. (a hilarious performance by football star Marshawn Lynch). The girls decide to start a self-defense fight club, despite having no ability or qualifications, because they think it might attract and impress Brittany and Isabel. Shockingly, Mr. G. agrees to be their sponsor. Even more shockingly, Brittany and Isabel show up. And most shocking of all, the girls in the group beat each other up and somehow feel empowered by it.

The girls have lied, though, about more than their intentions and skills. They said they learned to be tough when they were in juvie. They are so thrilled with how well the club is working, especially after Josie gets to comfort Isabel after she finds out Jeff has been cheating on her, that they do not think about what will happen when they are exposed.

Sennott, Galitzine, and Edebiri are a decade older than the characters they are playing, but this is not a movie that is going for realism. It is also not a movie that, like “PEN15” wants you to know that adults are playing teenagers. It just invites us into a world where somehow this all makes sense, and we are happy to follow along because the characters and situations are completely crazy but very funny. Heightened, even bizarre tones work well in stories of adolescence because that is a heightened, bizarre time of life. Every emotion and especially every humiliation seems so vitally important and earth-shaking, and the family support system that has been there all your life (if you are lucky) suddenly seems useless and incapable of understanding.

Galitzine could not be further from the elegant, refined, British prince he plays in “Red, White & Royal Blue.” His Jeff is an arrogant idiot and very funny. Edebiri (also in “The Bear” and “Theater Camp”) is a non-stop delight, with the most expressive face you will see on screen this year and a knock-out sense of timing. Needless to say, this movie is not for everyone, but those who appreciate subversive and transgressive humor will have a blast.

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop strong and crude language, a reference to suicide of a teenager, violence that becomes lethal, disturbing and graphic images, explicit sexual references and non-explicit sexual situations.

Family discussion: Is there anything in this movie that resembles your high school experience? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” “Book Smart,” “Heathers,” and “Polite Society”

Strays

Posted on August 17, 2023 at 11:28 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use
Profanity:	Constant very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Hallucinogen, alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, animal and human mauled
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 18, 2023

“Strays” is about 90 minutes long, but if you removed every f-word and reference to genitals and their various properties and functions it would be about ten minutes long, and most of the remainder would be the characters’ mushroom-inspired hallucinations resulting in the fatal mauling of a bunny.

Those characters are dogs, with the voices of Will Ferrell as the ever-cheerful Reggie, Jamie Foxx as the street -smart Bug, Randall Park as the shy Hunter, and Isla Fisher as the olfactory-gifted Maggie. If you think hearing dogs talk dirty is hilarious, then this is your movie, because that’s pretty much all there is.

Reggie is so devoted to his horrifically abusive owner Doug (Will Forte) that he insists that he is loved and cared for. Doug despises Reggie and kept the dog only as revenge on his girlfriend for leaving him. He spends all day looking at porn and smoking weed. When he is evicted, Doug keeps trying to get rid of Reggie by driving far away and throwing the dog out of the truck. But Reggie thinks it is a game and keeps finding his way back home. Finally, Doug drives far enough from home that Reggie is lost.

Then he meets Bug, who tells him that life is much better as a stray. Bug introduces him to Hunter, a support dog in a hospice, and Maggie, whose owner prefers her newer, cuter dog. Reggie is so angry when he learns that Doug did not love him that he is determined to go back home and bite off Doug’s favorite body part, the one he spends so much time with in front of his laptop.

And so the four friends go on a journey, where they have various adventures and encounters. They even run into two of the stars of the vastly better dog movie, “A Dog’s Journey,” Dennis Quaid (as himself) and Josh Gad (as “narrator dog,” a joke which might be funny if it wasn’t so distasteful to see him trashing his earlier film).

The humor of hearing animals use four-letter words wears thin quickly, the gestures toward lessons about friendship and connection are less than half-hearted, more like 16th-hearted, and the resolution is worse than distasteful, with a superfluous mid-credit scene just to hammer in a “joke” about severe disfigurement. Overall, it lurches from gross to dull, not meriting the attention of humans or canines.

Parents should know that this movie is non-stop strong and crude language, sexual references, and potty humor.

Family discussion: Why was Hunter shy about sharing his feelings with Maggie? Why did he like the cone?

If you like this, try: “A Dog’s Journey,” “Homeward Bound,” and “Hotel for Dogs”

Jules

Posted on August 10, 2023 at 5:49 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for strong language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Character attacked, sad death of a pet, violent murder off-screen
Diversity Issues:	Ageism
Date Released to Theaters:	August 11, 2023

Martin (Ben Kingsley) goes to every meeting of the town council in his western Pennsylvania community. Given one minute to express his views, he points out that he believes the town motto, “A place to call home,” is confusing and an intersection needs a crosswalk. Martin’s daughter Denise (Zoë Winters), a veterinarian, worries about him because his memory is slipping. She found a can of beans in the upstairs bathroom medicine cabinet and a newspaper in the freezer. But he stubbornly insists that he is doing fine.

And then a spaceship lands in Martin’s back yard, and his primary concern at first seems to be that it crushed his azaleas. He calls 911 but they think it’s a prank and hang up on him. And then something or someone from the spaceship is lying on on his porch.

Martin puts a blanket over his new visitor, and the next day invites him/her/it/them inside the house to get warm. (The characters in the movie call the visitor “him,” so I will, too.). Martin offers him snacks, but the only food the creature will eat are apple slices. Martin goes to the grocery store to buy more apples, explaining to the cashier that there is an alien in his house. “Like an illegal alien?” No, like someone from outer space. Zoe hears about it and gets more concerned.

Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) sees the alien and cautions Martin to keep him a secret. They decide to call him Jules. Another neighbor, Joyce (Jane Curtin) thinks he looks more like a Gary.

This is a low-key charmer, a kind of “E.T” for AARP. Jules does not speak and it is not clear how much he understands, but the look of his character is well designed (with movement by Jade Quon) to gain the trust and affection of Martin, Sandy, and Joyce, and of us in the audience. He is small in stature but humanoid in shape, with arms, legs, and face that look familiar to earthlings, and a peaceful blue skin color. His eyes seem knowing and his expression is solemn. He draws pictures of cats for Martin, and eventually the three senior citizens will figure out why.

Although there is an (off-camera) moment of violence and a sad loss, there’s a gentleness to the story that is very endearing. Because Jules is silent, people around him tend to open up to fill the silence, sharing confidences with him. Harris and Curtin are wonderful in those scenes. Director Marc Turtletaub’s understated tone allows these performances to bloom so that finally we feel that Jules’ superior intelligence is proven by his choice of a landing spot.

Parents should know that characters use strong language, and assault, and a violent death offscreen that is graphically described.

Family discussion: Do you think you will ever meet an alien? How will Tim react to his father’s message?

If you like this, try: “Cocoon” and “E.T.”