The Holdovers
Focus Features (2023)
For as good as Killers Of The Flower Moon was, if I was able to choose who wins at the Academy Awards, The Holdovers would win Best Picture and Best Actor would go to Paul Giamatti.
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| "I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me." - Paul Hunham (The Holdovers) |
I tend to have more to write about when it comes to movies that I don't like than ones that I love, and I'm not sure why that is. It could be that I'm just a negative person and words of complaint come easier to me than words of praise. That's probably it if I'm being completely honest, but if I wanted to bullshit myself, I'd say that I don't write as much about movies that I love because I think a movie is best experienced when you go into the theater as cold as possible. Don't watch the trailer. Don't read a plot synopsis. For god's sake, don't read a review. Learn just enough about it to motivate you to get off of the sofa and go down to your local cinema and nothing more. Then go to the theater, settle into your seat, and let the men and women who worked on this film tell you a story. Whatever you are watching, I can almost promise you will have a more enjoyable experience.
This is, for the most part, what I did with The Holdovers. I did see one of the trailers for it a few months ago when it was shown before another movie that I saw at my local Regal Cinema. It looked like something that I was going to enjoy, but I was expecting something along the lines of Rushmore based on the scenes that were included in the trailer. With all due respect to that film, which I highly recommend, The Holdovers is so much more. It's the best movie I've seen in a very long time.
