The Holdovers (2023)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I had to go in to work unexpectedly and it threw my whole day off.  Also, it's just been nominated (full list coming shortly) for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Film Editing.  Which is at least four nominations too many.

Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is shocked and appalled to be stuck at his elite boarding school over winter break 1970 after boasting about going to St. Kitts with his family.  Worse, he's stuck there with Mr. Hunham (Paul Giamatti), the notoriously strict History teacher and Mary Lamb (Da'vine Joy Randolph), the lunch lady who recently lost a son in Vietnam.  Can some tough love and compassion break through to the troubled teen?  Will the crusty mentor find a soft spot?  Will the only Black woman in the cast share world-weary wisdom?

I don't understand how this is so critically acclaimed unless everyone who reviewed it has a TBI that caused them to forget the literal hundreds of movies this is shamelessly copying.

Original screenplay?  Hardly.  We've been getting a variation on this story since roughly 400 BC.  I am so tired of Privileged Cis Hetero White Boy Learns Money Doesn't Buy Happiness.  

Best Actor?  Maybe as a consolation prize for not winning a more deserved role.

Best Supporting Actress?  Randolph is given almost nothing to do except smoke and give a single speech about how her son died as a contrast to the sons of privilege she's forced to serve.  I know it's set in 1970 but can we not avoid the Tired POC Servant role in modern films?

Best Film Editing?  There's nothing remarkable about this film's editing.  Baffling nomination.

This movie is two and a quarter hours long and every minute is a slog through the most mundane, milquetoast With Honors remake you could imagine.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.