A bit late but here’s the perfect Christmas gift!
The Holdovers
Cert: 15A, 2hrs 13mins
Mean Girls
Cert: 12A, 1hr 52mins
The End We Start From
Cert: 15A, 1hr 52mins
The Kitchen
Cert: 15, 1hr 47mins. Also on Netflix
Somewhat contrarily, The Holdovers turns out to be the ideal Christmas film, not only set at Christmas but featuring carols, a tree and the obligatory ice-skating scene. So quite why it’s being released in the dark days of January, goodness knows, but it does at least give proper grown-ups the chance to see a proper grown-up film.
Directed by Alexander Payne, of The Descendants and Sideways fame, it’s set at an expensive New England boarding school just as staff and irritatingly entitled pupils are preparing for the Christmas holidays of 1970. Only the unpopular classics teacher, Mr Hunham
(Paul Giamatti), roundly mocked for his wonky eye, body odour and eternal bachelorhood, insists on making his last lesson of term a proper lesson.
That’s partly because he’s that sort of old-fashioned teacher, but also because his punishment for not giving the lazy son of a generous benefactor a better grade is to be placed in charge of the handful of boys who are not going home for Christmas, the holdovers.
Initially there are five of them but when, in a slightly clunky plot-twist, a wealthy father whisks four away for a skiing holiday, it’s down to just one – the clever but immensely annoying Angus Tulley, played by the angular
Dominic Sessa. Clearly, important lessons are to be learnt and secrets revealed, by pupil and teacher alike.
This is a thoughtful and touching drama that quietly calls to mind the likes of Dead Poets Society, The History Boys and even Goodbye, Mr Chips. Giamatti – reuniting with Payne for the first time since the wonderful Sideways – and Sessa are both excellent, Da’Vine Joy Randolph impresses as the school’s grieving cook, Mary, and it’s hard not to warm to a film that features both an awful lot of corduroy as well as Badfinger and Labi Siffre in its period soundtrack.
Very often, when a much-loved film is remade, I suggest revisiting the original, just to remind yourself what all the excitement was about. But I wouldn’t bother with
Mean Girls, largely because it remains so faithful to the 2004 original but also because this new musical version, with added songs from the successful Broadway show, just isn’t as good.
One of the strengths of the original was its counter-intuitive casting – with the soon to be notorious Lindsay Lohan playing Cady Heron, the sweet, home-schooled new girl at North ShoreHigh,andthepositivelyangelic Rachel McAdams playing the bullying Regina George. Let’s just say that in the new version, with Angourie Rice and Reneé Rapp in those roles, it’s back to casting as usual.
With a screenplay that’s been notably cleaned up – expect no talk of hotties, eating disorders or buttered muffins here – and only a couple of decent songs, I was underwhelmed. In The End We Start From, the outstanding Jodie Comer plays a young woman who gives birth just as London, where she lives, and much of Britain is inundated by near-biblical floods. At first she and her partner (Joel Fry) think they can cope, escaping to his parents, who are self-sufficient country-dwellers
‘Thoughtful and touching drama that quietly calls to mind Dead Poets Society’
and seem to have been preparing for the apocalypse for years.
But as the rain continues, floodwaters rise and society begins to break down, even their food stocks run low. Horrible decisions are going to have to be made.
The post-apocalypse drama is an ever-more popular genre, and this stylish, atmospheric adaptation of Megan Hunter’s novel is a terrific addition, helped by an all too plausible premise and a supporting cast that includes Katherine Waterston, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong.
The Kitchen, which sees actor and Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya making his debut as a director alongside Kibwe Tavares, is set in a near-ish future London where social housing has been abolished and the last refuge for the economically disadvantaged are the heavily fortified, medium-rise blocks of ‘the Kitchen’, effectively a giant illegal squat.
It’s a little short on story but the visual effects that create a familiar yet still notably different London certainly impress, as does Kane Robinson, also known as Kano, who plays Izi, reluctant father figure to a boy he meets at a funeral. It stays with you.