The Holdovers (2023)

The world doesn’t make sense anymore. I mean, it’s on fire. The rich don’t give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line. Trust is just a name on a bank. December 1970 in New England. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a classics teacher at Barton Academy, a boarding school he once attended on scholarship. His students and fellow teachers despise him for his strict grading and stubborn personality. Dr. Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman) Barton’s headmaster and Hunham’s former student, scolds Hunham for costing the academy money by flunking the son of an important donor (a senator), causing Princeton University to withdraw his offer of a place. As punishment, Hunham is forced to supervise five students left on campus during the holiday break, including troublemaker Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) whose mother cancelled a family trip to St Kitts to honeymoon with her new husband. Also staying behind is cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) whose son Curtis attended Barton and joined the military to pay for college but has been killed in the Vietnam. To the students’ chagrin, Hunham forces them to study and exercise on their break. After six days, the wealthy father of one of the students arrives by helicopter and agrees to take all five students on the family’s ski trip with their parents’ permission. Angus, who is unable to reach his parents for permission, is left alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary. When Hunham catches Angus trying to book a hotel room, the two argue about Hunham’s disciplinarian policies. Angus impulsively runs through the school halls and defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his shoulder. Hunham takes Angus to the hospital; to protect Hunham from blame, Angus lies to the doctors about the circumstances of his injury. At a restaurant, Hunham and Angus encounter Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), Woodrup’s assistant. Hunham flirts with Lydia, who invites the pair to her Christmas party. Angus, Hunham, Mary and Barton’s janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia) attend Lydia’s party. Angus successfully flirts with Lydia’s niece Elise (Darby Lily Lee-Stack). Hunham is disappointed to discover that Lydia has a boyfriend and Mary gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown over Curtis’s death. Hunham insists on leaving early. Hunham and Angus argue; when Hunham references Angus’s father, Angus says his father is dead. Mary scolds Hunham for his unsympathetic attitude. Feeling remorseful for his actions, Hunham arranges his own small Christmas celebration … There’s nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man’s every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present. Director Alexander Payne’s campus dramedy is set in the early 1970s so the mind turns to those wintry Love Story moments and the political satires of the era and even casts itself as a gnarly riposte to Dead Poets Society: this boasts none of those tropes or inclinations. Instead it’s about the accidental forming of an alternative family with Giamatti in the best performance he’s created since the last time he worked with Payne in the estimable and beloved Sideways. Their collaborations create nuanced portraits of masculinity in a continuum observed in Payne’s other work but somehow come off best when they’re together. At least pretend to be a human being. Please. It’s Christmas! Here he’s essentially Scrooge on the path to redemption as the seasonal setting and quasi paternal function require. I have known you since you were a boy, so I think I have the requisite experience and insight to aver that you are and always have been penis cancer in human form. Newcomers Randolph and Sessa are impressive indeed in their debut film roles. The backdrop of course is Vietnam and it’s foregrounded with the loss of Randolph’s son reminding us that it’s offscreen drama which informs a lot of on the nose exchanges in an often cliched character study that paradoxically ignores the contemporary politics in the main, lending its focus instead to the politics of the school. Twisted fucker orphaned that glove on purpose. Left you with one so the loss would sting that much more. If there’s a flaw in construction it’s in the absurd overlength at 133 minutes – something that definitely could not be thrown at the films it wants to retrospectively join in the pantheon. Those chilly scenes of Winter 1970 are authentically captured by cinematographer Eigil Bryld who perhaps surprisingly was shooting digitally. Written by David Hemingson, very loosely adapting Marcel Pagnol’s Merlusse to create a quasi-autobiographical tale, this is bracingly performed. Not for ourselves alone are we born

Made For Each Other (1939)

It all happened rather suddenly. New York City. John Mason (James Stewart) is a young up and coming attorney . He has been doing his job well, and he has a chance of being made a partner in his law firm, especially if he marries Eunice (Ruth Weston), the daughter of his employer, Judge Joseph M. Doolittle (Charles Coburn). However John meets Jane (Carole Lombard) during a business trip in Boston and they fall in love and marry immediately, returning to New York and surprising everyone, John’s mother Harriet (Lucile Watson) most of all. She cannot conceal her disappointment, particularly when she learns Jane has no interest in pursuing a career. Yes-man colleague Carter (Donald Briggs) stops John and Jane going on honeymoon to Europe when he arrives on board their ship to tell him an important trial has been brought forward and John needs to attend for the firm. He wins the case but by that time Judge Doolittle has chosen Carter as the new partner which he reveals at the dinner party from hell hosted by Joseph and Jane at their apartment with Lily the maid (Louise Beavers) finally throwing in the towel due to Harriet’s overbearing manner. Eunice eventually marries Carter. Jane encourages John to demand a raise and a promotion but with finances tightened, Doolittle requires that all employees accept pay cuts. After Jane has a baby, John becomes discouraged by his situation – all the unpaid bills and his mother, who lives with them in their small apartment seemingly bent on destroying their marriage. Because she refuses to leave and occupies the small spare room, the baby has to sleep in the dining room of the apartment. On New Year’s Eve, 1938–39, when John and Jane finally go out for an evening on the town, the baby is rushed to the hospital with pneumonia and will die within hours unless a serum is delivered by plane from Salt Lake City, Utah but there’s a storm and nobody is flying … There are some things a man just can’t do. Sometimes movie star careers take a swerve for the serious and the public is momentarily confused. Perhaps that’s what happened when this was released because nobody really expected Carole Lombard to be despairing over a car crash of a marriage to lovable Jimmy Stewart whose harridan mother is ruining their lives while running their household. It starts as a malleable comedy drama and takes a turn for the potentially tragic and even Coburn isn’t funny which probably didn’t feel right for the fans but some shrewd writing saves this tonally shifting narrative from a descent into the totally maudlin. Rose Franken’s story was adapted for the screen by Jo Swerling with ‘humorous situations’ apparently contributed by an uncredited Frank Ryan. An oddity which has the unfortunate honour of prefiguring Lombard’s own demise in a snow storm similar to the one depicted here. Produced by David O. Selznick with cinematography by Leon Shamroy, production design by William Cameron Menzies and costumes by Travis Banton. Directed by John Cromwell (actor James’ dad) who would eventually be blacklisted after HUAC hearings. Don’t you know you’d be more comfortable if you took your shoes off?

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991)

I’ve had a very rough thirty-seven years and I need a break. Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate) has just graduated high school and her plans to join friends on vacation in Europe are ruined when her divorced mom (Concetta Tomei) decides to take off for two months to Australia leaving an elderly woman Mrs Sturak (Eda Reiss Merin) in charge of Sue Ellen and her twin Kenny (Keith Coogan) a stoner and slacker, 14-year old romantic Zach (Christopher Pettiet), 13-year old tomboy Melissa (Danielle Harris) and 11-year old TV addict Walter (Robert Hy Gorman). However Mrs Sturak dies of shock at the state of Kenny’s bedroom and after disposing of her at the local mortuary they realise she has taken the money for the summer. Sue Ellen draws the short straw and has to find a job. After failing miserably at a fast food place where she hits it off with co-worker Bryan (Josh Charles) she fakes her age and her way into an admin position at General Apparel West where designer boss Rose Lindsey (Joanna Cassidy) thinks she’s found an heir apparent.  While waiting for a paycheque she has to use petty cash to make the grocery bills and conceal her identity from office rival Carolyn (Jayne Brook) because she’s Bryan’s sister. Then the company runs into trouble and Sue Ellen’s unique (and recent) insights into teen fashion might just save the day … Did he just finish reading Dianetics or something? In which a grisly black comedy premise mutates into a tale of an accidental teenage career woman and her stoner brother who turns house husband chef, this is a feast in more ways than one:  the Nineties fashion, the role reversal whereby the kids assume adult roles more convincingly than the grown ups, and there’s a hilarious scene when Kenny chastises Sue Ellen for acting like an ungrateful spouse, home late after he’s spent the day cooking using Julia Child’s TV show to tutor him. Cassidy is outstanding as Sue Ellen’s boss who regresses to a candy-guzzling kid when her job is on the line, and an attractive cast of kids give spirited performances but it’s Applegate all the way. The imaginative use by David Newman of the Psycho score to see off Mrs Sturak is highly amusing. Written by Neil Landau and Tara Ison and directed by Stephen Herek. A relic of its era, in the best possible sense. Babysitters suck

Three Men and a Baby (1987)

This is a girl. Should we be doing this? Architect Peter Mitchell (Tom Selleck), satirist Michael Kellam (Steve Guttenberg), and actor Jack Holden (Ted Danson) are happy bachelors in their shared New York apartment, with frequent parties and flings with women. One day, a baby named Mary arrives on their doorstep with a note revealing she is the result of Jack’s tryst with an actress named Sylvia (Nancy Travis). Jack is in Turkey shooting a movie, and made arrangements with an ad director friend to have a package delivered to the apartment. Jack asked Peter and Michael to keep the delivery a secret per his friend’s wishes; when Mary arrives, they mistakenly believe she is the package. Peter and Michael learn to properly care for Mary, including nappy changes, baths, and feedings. When two criminals (Paul Guilfoyle and Earl Hindman) turn up looking for it they hand her over before they realise their mistake and then receive a visit from a police officer, Sgt Melkowitz (Philip Bosco) before Jack’s unexpectedly early return from Turkey … I’m an actor. I can do a father. A very pleasant remake of Coline Serrau’s French hit Trois hommes et un couffin, adapted by Jim Cruickshank and James Orr, with Selleck and Guttenberg proving a very durable double act giving a whole new meaning to the term homosocial as they attempt to parent a constantly crying infant and find their bachelor lifestyle turned upside down. The drug subplot may be a bit de trop as Celeste Holm (who plays Danson’s mom) said in another movie, but it’s fun and witty with great style while director Leonard Nimoy cleverly makes the most of the opportunity to invest in stunning production design by Peter S. Larkin, calculated to make you drool like a baby with apartment envy. Possibly the only film to unite Mr Spock with Dr Spock. Solid entertainment, this was huge back in the day. Do it our way or this goes down the toilet

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)

You never, ever let an attractive woman take a power position in your home. Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra) is happily married to lab tech Michael (Matt McCoy) with a little daughter Emma (Madeline Zima) and when she attends a new obstetrician Victor Mott (John de Lancie) she feels she has been molested during what should have been a routine check-up. Michael encourages her to report Mott to the state medical board and other women follow suit.  Mott commits suicide by shooting himself before a legal hearing can take place and his pregnant widow (Rebecca De Mornay) loses her baby, has an emergency hysterectomy and is broke because her husband’s suicide voids an insurance payout needed for his victims and their fabulous modernist home is put up for sale. She presents herself to the Bartels as nanny ‘Peyton Flanders’ and endears herself to Emma; makes Michael’s married ex, realtor Marlene Craven (Julianne Moore) warn Claire about the danger of having a good looking nanny; and is witnessed by disabled handyman Solomon (Ernie Hudson) breastfeeding newborn baby Joey.  Peyton then reports Solomon falsely for sexually assaulting Emma, ensuring his exit from their home. She arranges an accident to happen to Claire in the greenhouse but when she realises Marlene is on to her, she changes her victim … He wasn’t examining me. It was like he was getting off on it. What if I accused him and I was wrong? How amazing to hear these words come out of Sciorra’s mouth 28 years after this was released and two months after her testimony about what happened to her at the hands of studio head Harvey Weinstein, who derailed her career. This nuttily addictive home invasion/yuppies in peril thriller from writer Amanda Silver (granddaughter of screenwriter Sidney Buchman) ticks so many boxes for female viewers it positively tingles – capturing women’s vulnerability on so many levels: tapping into fears about ob-gyn appointments, pregnancy, a husband’s wandering eye, younger prettier women and the systematic way in which one apparently benign interloper can utterly undo a family’s stability with her insidious attractiveness and manipulative charms. The scene when De Mornay nurses Sciorra’s child is … startling. This is my family! A deeply pleasurable exploitation thriller raised to the level of zeitgeist comment by virtue of taut writing, brilliantly stylish directing by Curtis Hanson and a pair of well managed, contrasting performances by the leading ladies who make this property porno utterly compelling. De Mornay’s unravelling is perfectly, incrementally established. And it’s a treat to see this good early performance by Moore, even if she’s the least believable smoker in screen history; while sweet and resourceful little Zima grew up to be the lethally Lolita-esque teenage sexpot in TV’s Californication. This ferociously slick fun is probably the reason most women wouldn’t have a nanny within a yard of their homes if it could possibly be avoided. Don’t f*** with me retard! My version of the story will be better than yours

 

Halloween (1978)

Every kid in Haddonfield thinks this place is haunted. On a cold Halloween night in 1963, six year old Michael Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith. He was sentenced and locked away for 15 years in a sanitarium for the childhood murder of his older sister Judith. Now it’s October 30, 1978 and while being transferred for a court date 21-year-old Michael (Nick Castle) steals a car and escapes Smith’s Grove. He returns to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he looks for his next victims, stalking and killing promiscuous teenage babysitters on Halloween night. He targets Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) while being hunted down by his psychiatrist Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) … I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.  John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s cunning screenplay dissects and reconstructs the slasher movie and places it in the suburbs where carefree teens drink and drug and play around unaware that their grisly deaths are imminent as light briefly illuminates the dangerous darkness. The movies’ first properly famous virginal Final Girl is immortalised by Curtis in her screen debut, cast in her mother Janet’s immense Psycho shadow. On the one hand this is a clever homage and pastiche of feminist and misogynistic tropes;  on the other it’s a towering work of terror and one of the greatest horror films ever made, the granddaddy of them all.  Dazzling. You’ve fooled them, haven’t you, Michael? But not me

A Simple Favour (2018)

Are you going to Diabolique me?  Perky smalltown single mom and vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is swept away by her new friendship with the glorious Emily (Blake Lively) PR director to obnoxious NYC fashion maven Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend), too busy in her professional life to do anything but show up occasionally to collect her little son from school. While fellow moms inform Stephanie that she’s just a free babysitter she’s convinced she and Emily are best friends because they bond over a daily martini at Emily’s fabulous glass modernist house until one day she gets a call from Emily to look after her kid and Emily doesn’t return. Stephanie’s daily vlogs get increasingly desperate as the days wear on. After five days she can’t take it any more. She gets embroiled in a search along with Emily’s husband, the blocked author Sean Townsend (Henry Golding) for whom she has a bit of a thing until she decides to dress up and play Nancy Drew when she discovers Emily had a very good life insurance policy… She’s an enigma my wife. You can get close to her, but you never quite reach her. She’s like a beautiful ghost.  While the world gets its knickers in a twist about female representation along comes Paul Feig once again with an astonishing showcase for two of the least understood actresses in American cinema and lets them rip in complex roles that are wildly funny, smart and pretty damned vicious.  This adaptation by Jessica Sharzer of Darcey Bell’s novel has more twists and turns than a corkscrew and from the incredible jangly French pop soundtrack – which includes everyone from Bardot & Gainsbourg and Dutronc to Zaz – to the cataclysmic meeting between these two pathological liars this is bound to end up in … murder! Deceit! Treachery! Nutty betrayals! Incredible clothes! Lady parts! Revelations of incest! Everything works here – from jibes about competitive parenting and volunteering, to the fashion business, family, film noir, Gone Girl (a variant of which is tucked in as a sub-plot), heavy drinking, wonderful food, electric cars.  And again, the clothes! Kudos to designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus who understands how to convey personality and story. Never wear a vintage Hermès scarf with a Gap T-shirt. If you were truly Emily’s friend, you would know that It’s wonderfully lensed by John Schwartzman, one of my favourite cinematographers and the production design and juxtapositions sing. This is an amazing tour of genres which comes together in two performances that are totally persuasive – in another kind of film Kendrick and Lively might have to tell each other You complete me:  the shocking flashbacks to their pasts (which are both truthful and deceitful) illuminate their true characters. This is that utter rarity – a brilliantly complicated, nasty and humorous tale of female friendship that doesn’t fear to tread where few films venture. It’s an epic battle of the moms. Film of the year? I’ll say! I am so glad that this is the basis of my 2,000th post. Brotherfucker!  MM#2000

 

Mystic Pizza (1988)

Why does it hurt so much? Kat (Annabeth Gish) and Daisy (Julia Roberts) are sisters working with Jojo (Lili Taylor) at the pizzeria in Mystic Connecticut. Kat is an egghead astronomer aiming to get into Yale who falls for the father (William R. Moses) of the child she’s babysitting while his wife’s away. Daisy is a good time gal with eyes for a WASPy law school grad Charlie (Adam Storke) who’s actually been sacked for cheating on his finals. Their mother favours Kat and worries perpetually about Daisy.  Jojo gets cold feet on the day of her wedding to fisherman Bill (Vincent D’Onofrio) and then goes to pieces when they eventually split. Meanwhile the pizza parlour’s proprietress Leona (Conchata Ferrell) is worried that her revenues are slipping and the girls think that a spot on The Fireside Gourmet‘s TV show would do the trick… Daddy banging the babysitter is a really old story, Kat; it happens all the time. There are terrific performances gracing this sleeper which illustrates all the strengths of the respective actresses:  it’s not hard in retrospect to see that Pretty Woman would be all Roberts’ when you see her shaking out her hair and raising her hemline to catch a lift on the roadside. Amy Holden Jones’ story and screenplay about this Portuguese Catholic community got a rewrite from Perry Howze & Randy Howze and Alfred Uhry and it’s decently handled by director Donald Petrie but that soundtrack is seriously intrusive! For details obsessives it’s fascinating to hear the adenoidal tones of Robin Leach describing Mar-a-Lago on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and that’s Matt Damon playing the preppie’s little brother during an excruciating dinner party. A major cult at this point. I’m tellin you I love you, and all you love is my dick! Do you know how that makes me feel?

Little Children (2006)

It’s the hunger. The hunger for an alternative, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness. Sarah (Kate Winslet) is in a stultifying situation – stay at home mom to a very robust little girl, she’s obliged to endure the Mean Girl quips of competitive moms at the playground, all of whom appear obsessed with house husband Brad (Patrick Wilson) who keeps failing his bar exams and is kept by his beautiful documentary filmmaker wife (Jennifer Connelly). On a dare, Sarah gets to know him – and they fall into a deeply sexual relationship while their children are on playdates. He conceals their meetings from his wife and they occur in between his trips to hang out with the local teenaged skateboarding gang and playing touch football with off-duty police officers. He reacquaints himself with Larry (Noah Emmerich) a retired officer who’s on a mission to go after a supposedly reformed returned paedophile (Jackie Earle Haley) in the neighbourhood:  Brad accompanies him to the house where they find the man is living with his elderly mother (Phyllis Somerville) who is trying to get her son to find a nice girl (which results in an utterly horrifying scene). Sarah finds her husband masturbating to online porn and she starts to think of escape… Adapted by Tom Perrotta from his own novel, this exerts a literary pull in a good way with a voiceover orienting us to people’s workaday notions and sordid lives in much the manner of Updike or Cheever or indeed Madame Bovary which features as the local book club’s choice. Shocking, adult entertainment about people as they probably really are, shallow, nasty and pretty terrible when they trap each other into relationships, this is outstandingly performed and made. Directed by Todd Field.

Home Again (2017)

You’re telling me you have live-in childcare, tech support AND sex?! Alice Kinney (Reese Witherspoon) decamps back to LA with her two young daughters when she separates from her music manager husband Austen (Michael Sheen) in NYC.  On the night of her 40th birthday she goes partying with her best girlfriends Dolly Wells (of TV’s Dot and Em) and Jen Kirkman and is hit on by twentysomething Harry (Pico Alexander) who with his brother Teddy (Nat Wolff) and friend George (Jon Rudnitsky) have made a hit short film and are new in town to try to turn it into a feature after getting interest from the WCA talent agency (cue funny meeting). The guys wind up back at hers, Harry throws up while about to do the deed with Alice and next morning George realises her father was the great auteur director John Kinney when he stumbles into a room filled with scripts, posters, camera and – ta-da! – Oscar. And then whaddya know, the late great one’s wife and muse Lillian Stewart (Candice Bergen) walks into the house and invites the would-be filmmakers to live in the guesthouse. Call it philanthropy – she’s feeling kind since she outlived the man who impregnated a younger woman and had a second family – this might be a riff on reality a la Nancy Meyers since it’s her daughter Hallie’s romcom debut.   It’s a peculiar setup in many ways – but the kids love the guys, Alice is having a hard time doing business as an interior decorator with super bitch Zoey Bell (Lake Bell) and this odd domestic situation is not unpleasant. The compulsion to return those nuisance long-distance calls to NYC subside.  Harry isn’t aware that sensitive George fancies Alice too and has taken a side job as a rewrite man, Teddy is auditioning for other roles so he’s now left with the heavy lifting of raising finance among the Hollywood set led by horror director Justin Miller (Reid Scott). When Alice is finally ready to introduce Harry to her friends as her date it clashes with a money meeting and he stands her up, causing a real rupture. Then her not-quite-ex decides to find out what’s really going on on the west coast … Light and funny, this isn’t quite as sharp and zesty as Meyers’ best work (Meyers produced) and there are too many montages set to music as a substitute for character development and dialogue and not remotely enough the type of complications that you’d expect from such a plot. Wells and Kirkman are two fine comic actresses in their own right but they don’t get the full Greek chorus role they deserve and the subplot with Bell (from It’s Complicated) is underdeveloped. Lola Flanery is terrific as the older of the two kids with serious anxiety problems but a talent for writing which George encourages.  Reese is always good value and she’s fine in a somewhat underwritten part which never really lets her rip other than getting drunk and spouting some home truths; while as her young lover Pico Alexander is serious eye candy and they really spark on screen. You’ll have seen him in A Most Violent Year and Indignation. You’ll certainly see him again. Mild, likeable entertainment. Written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer.