Movie: The Holdovers and May December
Running Times: 2:13 (ok) and 1:53 (better)
Nominated for: Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Editing and Original Screenplay
How I watched: AMC A List and Netflix
When it had me: Nostalgia
When it lost me: Nostalgia
What systems does it challenge: Academia and Pedophilia? This is getting confusing
Ok, I may regret this but I crammed these two movies together for a reason. Both placed themselves solidly within an era and committed to the bit.
The Holdovers IS 1970. The trailer was made with shaky sound and out of date fonts. The movie even began with the old blue and white screen with the rating listed. That jaunty letter R brought back so many memories! Alexander Payne really commits to this movie being a time capsule. I imagine those of us that remember the 70s will feel that kind of warm embrace that reliving a certain time can bring. I wonder how it lands with younger audiences? It's hard for me to guess, since I was the youngest audience member the day I went.
May December is technically set in 2015 but it revolves around a Mary Kay Latourneau stand-in played by Julianne Moore who was convicted of rape of a 7th grader in 1992. And the movie feels very much stuck in 1992. The characters in may ways have never been able to leave that initial criminal act behind them and the movie honors that by being stuck in time as well. Despite Julianne Moore's character going to jail, the couple's love appears to transcend their 23 year age difference and they have gone on to raise a family together. Now they are faced with an actress who wishes to learn about their lives so she can portray the sex offender in a new TV movie. May December uses the soft focus of vaseline on camera lenses and super melodramatic music to keep you firmly stuck in the past.
In The Holdovers, the time machine works. It's cohesive and sets the scene for the type of movie we might have seen back then. Movie stars were rougher and less glamourous and Paul Giamatti delivers as a curmedgeonly (even that apt descriptor feels out of the past) teacher nicknamed Walleyeye with his hyperhydrosis and sweat that stinks like fish. The story itself is simple and entirely predictable but hits all the right notes of comedy and poignancy. The acting is really stellar from all of the three main characters, Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, in his first role ever. The movie didn't challenge but it didn't disappoint and it's big delivery was the perfection of the time capsule.
By contrast, May December felt completely disjointed and confusing because of its time slip. Soft focus TV melodrama is a bold choice, considering it isn't all that pleasant to watch. Even when you are nailing it, it doesn't feel like quality film making. What was pleasant was the feeling of danger that pulsed beneath the surface of the film. Whether we were watching an adult trying to process the abuse he suffered at the hands of his beloved or watching Natalie Portman embody a cannabalistic actress getting ready to tear apart a family in order to pick the bones clean, I had the sense that anything could go seriously wrong at any moment.
I don't know that I was satisified by how it delivered on that sense of impending doom but the tension was good. The greatest thing going for the film was the acting. Julianne Moore created a wacky but believable psychological study and then Natalie Portman slowly transformed herself into that same mold and that was something cool to watch. The worst thing going for the movie was that after I watched it I read about its dark and campy humor. Humor? Comedy? Oh. I did not get that from watching it. At all. I thought maybe I just flubbed the ball on that one but I've checked with several other people who missed it as well. That seems like a bad thing for the audience to misunderstand.
In a head to head, The Holdovers wins this match up by a mile.
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