The Holdovers

Wednesday afternoon, Sharon and I saw The Holdovers at the Cinemark Century Arden 14 and XD theater. We are continuing our annual trek to see all of the potential Oscar nominated films. The GoldDerby site has the film in the running for best picture, best actor, best supporting actress and best original screenplay nominations.

The film is a comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne and written by David Hemmingson. It stars Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dylan Sessa.

Set in 1970, it follows Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a curmudgeonly history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone the handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. He is joined by Mary Bradshaw (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the school's cook who is grieving the death of her son in the Vietnam War and Angus (Dylan Sessa), a troubled student who is struggling to cope with his parent's divorce.

At dinner at Original Pete's afterwards, Sharon said "that was lovely." The film does a very good job with the development of all three of the main characters. It will be interesting to see how well the movie does garnering Oscars nominations in a field that includes the heavily promoted Barbie, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

One footnote. On an early Wednesday afternoon in a deserted theater complex, the small theater showing The Holders was packed with older retired people!?!