The Holdovers (2023 Alexander Payne)

It hasn't even been released here yet. Why they didn't get it out for Christmas is a mystery, like the studio don't really know what they've got.

Something of a departure for Payne. Although he apparently came up with the idea after watching the 1935 Marcel Pagnol film Merlusse, he commissioned TV writer David Hemingson on the back of a boarding school pilot he had read. So Payne isn't credited on the screenplay, and he seems to have lost some of his core team - namely co-writer Jim Taylor, Phedon Papamichael on camera and Rolfe Kent as composer. No matter, what he has done here is marvellous. A very 1970s setting, complete with old Universal logo and scratches on the beginning, and lovely production design by Ryan Warren Smith. And things like those really big quick zoom ins that you don't get any more (self-contradiction noted).

It's a crafty screenplay, drip feed writing, reflections everywhere. Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa are both great as characters who have more in common than they think. Da'vine Joy Randolph (from Only Murders - of course, didn't realise) is also great as the grieving mother. With Carrie Preston (The Good Fight), Brady Hepner (the obnoxious Kountze), a most unfamiliar cast, overall. (Which is refreshing.)

Tent has that lovely way of doing dissolves like those we were admiring in Sideways recently. Eigil Bryld is on camera (it's shot on digital but you wouldn't think so) and there's an entirely appropriate soundtrack of Christmas carols and contemporary tracks. And the snowy New England background adds to the melancholy feeling (The Last Detail and McCabe and Mrs Miller were referenced for the look - the latter is one of Payne's top three films).

Payne is Greek-American and refers to his films with the Greek term 'Harmolipi', happiness and sadness together, what we might call 'bittersweet'.

Also loved the way the film doesn't go where you guess it might, doesn't go Goodbye Mr Chips or Dead Poets Society, for example.

Ranks up there with the best Payne films Sideways, The Descendants and Nebraska.

I didn't realise until now - it's also in 1.66:1!

Definitely a Film of the Year. Also loved the film they go to see is Little Big Man, and the fact the way it begins, it's almost like we're in The Shining (maybe deliberate).