We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Cody gets into the Christmas spirit with three comedies.
THE HOLDOVERS (2023)
Not only is the comedy drama The Holdovers set during the last days of 1970 and the first days of 1971, but director Alexander Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson were also able to make the film come off like it was made in the time period when it’s set. It looks and feels like a ‘70s movie (with kudos to the crew that dressed the set and helped find the locations), it moves along like ‘70s movie. It’s actually surprising to see that this was an original screenplay by Hemingson rather than an adaptation of a novel, because it has way more scenes than you would usually find in the average modern drama. The scope of the story isn’t wide, but there is a whole lot packed into the movie’s 133 minutes.
Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham, a guy who seems to be a complete dick when we first meet him. He’s a history teacher at a New England boarding school called Barton Academy, and he’s very strict with and demanding of his students. He even goes further than the headmaster would like, failing a student who’s the son of a senator who also happens to be a school donor. Which is why Hunham is chosen to be the staff member who has to stay at Barton over the Christmas and New Year break to supervise the small handful of students who also won’t be going home for the holidays. Not being able to leave the school isn’t much of a punishment for Hunham, he rarely leaves the campus anyway, but having to watch these kids instead of spending his time reading history and mystery books is a pain.
Soon most of the holdover students have been able to leave on a ski trip with one’s father, so Hunham, cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia) are left with just one student to deal with: Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully, whose father is out of the picture and whose mother has decided to spend the holidays enjoying a delayed honeymoon with her new husband instead of with her only child. As you would expect, given his home life, Angus is a troubled kid, and takes some opportunities to do some troublemaking. But as you would expect from a movie like this, we gradually come to care about and understand him more and more. And the same can be said for Hunham, who isn’t the total jerk he initially seemed to be.
The Holdovers is a great film that has understandably drawn comparisons to the work of director Hal Ashby (like The Last Detail) and absolutely deserves to be in the running for Academy Awards this year. Giamatti, Sessa, and Randolph turn in terrific performances, perfectly brought to the screen by Payne, and Hemingson did a hell of a job writing out the story. Maybe it didn’t need to be 133 minutes, Payne and editor Kevin Tent probably could have trimmed out a few of those, but there was never a point when I didn’t enjoy being immersed in the world of this film.
FOUR CHRISTMASES (2008)
Director Seth Gordon’s holiday comedy Four Christmases was a success when it was released back in 2008, racking up almost $164 million during its theatrical run – and I attended one of its screenings, so I contributed to that box office haul. Despite doing well, the film isn’t one I’ve seen referenced very often over the last fifteen years. I’m not even sure if I’ve seen it a second time at any point while those years went by. But I decided to rewatch it this year, and found that it held up pretty well. It’s an entertaining, funny movie, so I can understand why it did so well back in the day.
Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon star as Brad McVie and Kate Kinkaid, a couple that has been dating for three years but has never spent Christmas with either of their families. Instead, they go on vacation, lying to their parents and telling them they’re doing charity work when they’re actually just going to places like Fiji to enjoy themselves. But this year, a snow storm hits before they can catch a flight out of their home base of San Francisco, stranding them in California for Christmas. And when family spots them on TV during a news report about the cancelled flights, they have to agree to spend the day visiting loved ones. Both are children of divorce, so they have to go to four different homes to celebrate Christmas with four different sets of people.
They start off with the madness of Brad’s family, visiting his dad Howard (Robert Duvall), being forced to rough-house with his brothers Dallas (Tim McGraw) and Denver (Jon Favreau)... and Brad’s nephews, who are just like Dallas and Denver, one of them played by a young Skyler Gisondo. Then they head over to the home of Kate’s mother Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen), to interact with her friends, Kate’s sister Courtney (Kristin Chenoweth), and her mischievous little daughter. They also have to stop by the church headed up by Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam). After that, they have to visit Brad’s mom Paula (Sissy Spacek), whose much younger partner Darryl (Patrick Van Horn) used to be Brad’s best friend. The day wraps up at the home of Kate’s father Creighton (Jon Voight), who makes the least impression as a character because he’s the only one who has a home life that’s normal and chill.
There are a lot of laughs to be had at most of these four different Christmas celebrations (not so much at the last one), and as you can see the movie has an incredible cast. The standouts in the supporting cast also include Katy Mixon as Denver’s wife Susan – but while much of the comedy comes from the ridiculous characters Brad and Kate are related to, the real MVP of the film may be Vince Vaughn himself, as he has some hilarious moments. My recent viewing of the movie was with blog contributor Priscilla, and I think she laughed for two minutes straight at the scene where Brad is disgusted to see Kate get puked on by her sister’s baby.
This is a good comedy that I should be watching more often than once every fifteen years.
HAPPIEST SEASON (2020)
The first thing that comes to my mind when I see the name Clea DuVall will always be her role in the 1998 alien invasion horror movie The Faculty. That’s just a fact that’s not going to change. But now, after I’ve thought of The Faculty, I will also think of her as the director and co-writer of a really good Christmas comedy movie: Happiest Season, which was supposed to get a theatrical release back in 2020, but had to change course and go directly to streaming due to the pandemic lockdown. It took me three years to get around to watching it, and a big reason for the delay is the lead: the movie stars Kristen Stewart.
I was impressed by Stewart’s acting skills when she was a kid in Panic Room. Unfortunately, some of the biggest successes of her career came in films where she delivered oddly wooden performances that made me start to see her as a very off-putting actor. Her name on a movie’s cast list is the opposite of a draw for me. So I was in no hurry to watch her in Happiest Season. When I finally got around to watching the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Stewart is not only good in it, but she was even able to make me care about her character so much that this was the rare “romantic comedy” where I didn’t want the two main characters to end up together.
Those characters are Stewart’s Abby Holland and her girlfriend Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis), who have been dating for around a year when Abby talks Harper into taking her to her parents’ place for Christmas. Trouble is, Harper has never come out to her family, so she asks Abby to pretend that they’re just roommates while they’re around them. Harper will sleep in her childhood bedroom while Abby takes a room in the basement.
During their stay at the Caldwell home, the expected comedy of errors and quirky characters plays out. Abby tries to impress Harper’s parents, played by Victor Garber and Mary Steenburgen, and things don’t work out as well as she would have liked. Along the way, Harper proves to be a rather lousy girlfriend on multiple occasions, so I was rooting for Abby to realize that she deserves better and just walk away from the relationship.
DuVall assembled a strong cast for the movie, with Alison Brie playing Harper’s sister Sloane, who appears to have the perfect life; co-writer Mary Holland playing Jane, the overlooked middle sister; Aubrey Plaza showing up as local Riley, who knows very well how lousy of a girlfriend Harper can be; Jake McDorman playing Harper’s ex-boyfriend Connor; and Daniel Levy nearly stealing the show as Abby’s best friend John, who has been trusted with taking care of her pets while she’s out of town.
Happiest Season is a really nice movie that makes for a pleasant holiday viewing experience. It’s well made and written, tells an engaging story, provides some laugh, and has definitely improved my opinion of Kristen Stewart as an actress. Her name on a cast list will no longer be a deterrent to me.
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