The Holdovers
Thought the screenplay was downright bad (not shocked to find that <PERSON>’s entire career has been in network TV) outside of <PERSON>’s characterization, but I thought that was unexpectedly excellent - the small but critical distinction between lovable asshole with a complex personality once you get to know him and asshole with a truly one-note personality who’s theoretically capable of being lovable pays off, and the ways he grows (it’s his coming of age story, not <PERSON>’s - although <PERSON>’s gonna have a great career) are small and realistic rather than the trite and obvious Big Emotional Gestures found everywhere else in the script. That said, the central character’s arc working uncommonly well means, whadda ya know, the rest of the movie ends up working well enough too! Don’t think this works at all as a 70’s pastiche, period piece or throwback beyond “they used to let weird-looking guys be sensitive in low-stakes dramedies,” no matter how much <PERSON> wants it to (and he wants it bad, if the frequent folk-music-scored slow-fade-edited montages are anything to go by), but I do think there are lots of interesting and effective formal decisions here, which I admit, I kinda forgot <PERSON> was capable of making. Found myself immensely frustrated by the film grain, though - not sure if they did a full on film out (I know prints are playing places) or used an overlay or what, but this is a lovely looking work of digital cinematography as is, and I think the handful of frames with visible “damage” present in the master copy (nothing too crazy, this isn’t Death Proof, just bits of dust and stuff like that) are, out of all the self-conscious period affectations that don’t really land, the only one that truly falls flat for me. 282