The Holdovers
SimilarApocalypse Now (1979), Brazil (1985), Donnie Brasco (1997), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Fargo (1996), Forrest Gump (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987), GoodFellas (1990), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016), Monster (2003), Mystic River (2003), Oldboy (2003), Scrooge (1951), Shrek the Third (2007), Solaris (1972), The Apartment (1960), The Departed (2006), The Fisher King (1991), The Party 2 (1982), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Silent Partner (1978), To Die For (1995), Wonder Boys (2000),
Watch afterAmerican Fiction (2023), Anatomy of a Fall (2023),
Barbie (2023) Killers of the Flower Moon (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Poor Things (2023), Society of the Snow (2023), The Killer (2023), The Marvels (2023),
StarringGillian Vigman,
StudioMiramax,
After stumbling with Downsizing, Alexander Payne bounces back with a gentle & witty comedy-drama.
The artist Dmitry Samarov one said to me that the ratio of good to bad late periods in an artist's life was depressing to consider. For every Sir Edward William Elgar there was an Eric Clapton (my example, not his), and that it was rare to see someone sharpen as they aged. Now, I like Dmitry and certainly respect his opinion, but I can’t help but feel that when film overtook painting as the dominant artwork that people engage with, the ratio shifted towards bizarre experimentation and welcome self-reflection as much as dull self reflection.
Take for instance 62 year old Alexander Payne, who, after the biggest disaster of his career (2017’s confused parable Downsizing), has started his fourth decade as a director by leaning hard back into what he knew (and what the royal “we” enjoyed) and rediscovered himself with The Holdovers, a movie no one can seem to stop comparing to Hal Ashby. No mean feat, of course, but even that sells its virtues short. This is no mere homage, no mere return to form, this is the movie that Payne’s been hoping to make since his 90s heyday, a film that earns both its jaundiced gaze and its catharsis. Continue Reading →
Fast X
SimilarBen-Hur (1959), Blown Away (1994), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Oldboy (2003), The Godfather Part III (1990), The Interpreter (2005), Zatoichi (2003),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Meg 2: The Trench (2023), The Flash (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023),
Let's face it: At this point, you're either in for the overamped, Saturday-morning-cartoon lunacy of a Fast and Furious movie or you're not. Building from its humble roots as a 2001 street-racing Point Break riff to the gargantuan action tentpole it's after a whopping ten movies (eleven if you count Hobbs & Shaw), the series has built quite the convoluted lore over the decades. There are dead characters who come back to life (Sung Kang's Han), living characters who can never come back because their actors are no longer with us (see: Paul Walker's Brian), sworn enemies who join the familiar just one film later. It's dudebro soap opera, fueled by nitrous oxide and every weird, bonkers thing the filmmakers can think to do with a car. Continue Reading →