7
On not liking The Holdovers
I didn’t want to see The Holdovers because it looked like a troubled-young-man-comes-of-age story, a genre that bores me (there have been so many). I was persuaded to go by friends, found it was a sad-middle aged-weirdo-man-finds-himself story, and liked it even less.
Now, I think Paul Giamatti is a great actor, but was underwhelmed by the performance. I had no empathy for the character (and I am a veritable fount of fictional empathy), or indeed any of the characters. The manipulative sad teen boy, the saintly suffering middle aged bereaved mother for whom Da'Vine Joy Randolph won an Oscar, the various secondary characters.
I would have been more interested in the movie if it had held on longer to some of the secondary characters. The dynamic among the group of miserable outcast boys was a bit interesting and could have been rewarding, but off they went skiing, Carrie Preston I always enjoy, and the awkwardness of this creepy sad dude thinking she’s into him because she’s sociable and nice could have been fruitful.
The whole movie seemed set up to make me not care, as off-putting as the protagonist with his self-hatred and bad breath.
I really enjoyed the Witch Elm by Tana French. A real page-turner.
SO GOOD! I'm not sure if she's done writing or what, she was releasing a book every two years starting w Into the Woods but she hasn't released any book since The Searcher and it's been three+ years now :(