Tag: new england

THE HOLDOVERS – Review

We just finished that spooky holiday and now we (mostly the retailers) are gearing up for the big two end-of-the-year family holidays. And if you’re at school and far away from family you’re looking forward to taking a break from academia to reunite with those loved ones. But what if that’s not possible, and you’re stuck for a couple of weeks with your least favorite teacher? That’s the premise of this dramedy, which is a cause for celebration for film lovers. That’s because it’s the latest directorial effort from a filmmaker who has been delighting us for over thirty years now. And for a little extra treat in our stocking, this reunites him with an actor who has been quite a scene stealer in supporting character roles. Well now, he’s front-and-center along with a talented acting duo as the the trio that’s forced to bound over Christmas and into New Year’s as THE HOLDOVERS.

It’s a very chilly snowy 1970 December on the campus of the prestigious Barton Academy, an elite prep school for boys in the New England area. All the students are “psyched” for Christmas break, especially fifteen-year-old Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). He’s one of the better scholars, but he has a knack for getting into mischief. Although he gets passing grades, he still manages to “get under the skin” of prickly curmudgeon Dr. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) the loathed teacher of ancient civilizations. And the dean at Barton is not too happy with him as he didn’t give a ‘pass’ to the son of a wealthy school donor. Therefore Hunham will stay on campus during the break to supervise the students with nowhere to go for the holiday. Then Tully suddenly finds himself in that group after his mother informs him that she’s planning a belated Winter honeymoon with her new hubby. And then the group of “holdovers” is “whittled down to three when a rich papa whisks away four students in his private copter. Their parents were called and gave the “OK” while Tully’s couldn’t be reached. So he’s “stuck” at school with Hunham and the cafeteria supervisor Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who recently lost her only son in Vietnam. So, is there any way this threesome can get along and make these holidays happy?

Oh welcome back Mr. Giamatti, it feels as though your excellent work on the Showtime series “Billions” has kept you away from the big screen far too long. Happily, you’ve gifted us with a superb performance as the reviled teacher mockingly called “Walleye”. He could have easily become a caricature of the scholarly dictator cartoonishly ruling his classroom with an iron fist. Mind you, we get a bit of that in the opening sequences as he gifts his charges with a “lump of coal” wrapped in homework, but Hunham is more complex than that. His hard exterior doesn’t obscure his longing spirit as Giamatti shows us that this surly misanthrope yearns for a human connection, as he tries not to drown in a sea of regret and remorse. One of the few staffers he reaches out to is Mary, played by the compelling Ms. Randoph. Her no-nonsense kitchen queen also puts up a “tough front”, not wishing to be pitied for her heart-wrenching loss. Randolph shows us that Mary has found another wounded soul in Hunham. Much of the same can be said for the “tossed away” son played by screen newcomer Sessa who uses a snarky wiseguy attitude to mask the hurt abandonded child inside. With his Pop “out of the picture”,, Tully needs a family connection to his mother who appears to toss him aside for her new beau. And Sessa shows us how this fuels his rebellious behavior with Hunham. Sessa’s best moments are when he strains against his mentor as he tries to charge into adulthood (his flirtation with a local girl is charming and a bit “cringe”). These three powerhouse actors provide a strong foundation for the film.

But it all might collapse if it weren’t for the superior “architect” behind this story, the engaging filmmaker Alexander Payne working from David Hemingson’s smart and sensitive (and very funny) screenplay. The two expertly recreate that “transition time” as the radical 60s eased into the go-go 70s. Helping considerably is the authentic sets (all real places), art direction, costuming, and grooming (wow, those helmet-like hair haircuts of the day). This is first and foremost a Payne project as we become involved with these offbeat characters, but it’s also a warm homage to the directors of that period as the whole movie has the feel of lauded director Hal Ashby (especially THE LAST DETAIL with the trio at the center of a journey), mixed with a touch of James Bridges’ THE PAPER CHASE and assorted other school-set dramedies. The atmosphere seems so real as we can almost feel those cold dark paneled floors as the characters tromp through those long empty hallways. And again, Payne gets the best out of his cast, rivaling his last collaboration with Giamatti nearly twenty years ago with SIDEWAYS. There are no flashy camera techniques or staccato editing, merely (though it’s oh so rare) assured storytelling abetted by superlative performances. THE HOLDOVERS is a true cinematic holiday gift for movie lovers everywhere.

4 Out of 4

THE HOLDOVERS is now playing in select theatres

THE GOOD HOUSE – Review

With the temps falling and the leaves slowly changing, lots of folks may be thinking of taking a trip to New England. Perhaps you could “hunker down” in a quaint old house by the water. Hey, if you’ve got the moola, maybe you could just buy the place, and make it your getaway, or permanent “digs”. Oh but most of us would have to do this vicariously, maybe at the movies. But who would you contact about such a fantasy home, say in a rustic lil’ village? And that is answered in this week’s star-powered release. Surely such a spot would be free of worries, “no hassles, no hustles”, right? Not really, as this film’s focus finds out. It seems you’re never safe from those “inner demons”, not even at THE GOOD HOUSE.


That person living in such a primo place is the town’s number one realtor Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver). Well, former number one, since that title is held by her former assistant Wendy (Kathryn Erbe), who “poached ” the top clients when she went out on her own. This was just after Hildy “went away” for a time, a year ago after an intervention. Hildy was ambushed by her two daughters, Emily and Tess, along with her ex-husband Scott (David Rasche), and trusted aide Wendy. This prompted a stay in a rehab facility and a promise that she’ll attend “meetings” (she bailed after the first couple). Sure the real estate market is tough, but luckily she can call on her childhood crush, surly, grizzled, laid-back Frankie Getchell (Kevin Kline) to send out one of his work crews, or even himself, to make a house more “homey”. Also taking the edge off the “job” is the box of vino that Hildy keeps hidden in her house’s “work shed” (just a glass or two…or three with her two doggies). Of course, she’s slipping into her “old ways”, so when work frustrations are paired with her knowledge of an affair between her new best pal, bored rich housewife and drinking buddy (she’s unaware) Rebecca (Morena Baccarin) and upstairs from her office shrink Peter (Rob Delaney), Hidly runs to the arms of Frankie, after more of “the grape”. Is there any way this rekindled romance can sober up (in more ways than one) Hildy and free her from her family’s cycle of self-medication?

This story of remorse and regret is an engaging showcase for Weaver’s powerful performance. Her steely intelligence shines through, and the decision to have her “break the fourth wall” and talk directly to us through the camera lens lets us relish her superb comic timing. It’s also a better way to “get inside her head” as she engages in near-constant “bargaining” (“I’ll only have a glass or two when I’m home, at night, with the pups”) and her denials, tempered with a “Yankee stubbornness”. She can “handle it” and keeps all the “plates spinning”…until she lets them fall and crash, one after another. In their third screen outing, Weaver has a “chemistry shorthand” with the always charming Kline, whose Frank tries to project an aura of casual coolness, a free-spirited rambler. However, he can’t mask concern about his spiraling former fling. Baccarin excels as the small-town bombshell “trophy wife” whose dazzling smile can’t hide her loneliness. Delaney (so good in “Catastrophe”) is the passive-aggressive intellectual desperate to conceal his wrecked marriage. Plus there are a couple of brief turns by two acting vets. Paul Guilfoyle (“CSI”) is Hildy’s irritating reminder of her family’s deception as he tells her that they miss her at the “meetings”. And Beverly D’Angelo oozes star power as the local beauty queen who’s always around for the part, and to be the lil’ devil on Hildy’s shoulder.

A directing “tag team tackled this film with Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky sharing the reigns and also joining Thomas Bezucha in adapting the novel by Ann Leary. They expertly set up the “picture perfect” town of Wendover, MA (though shot in gorgeous Nova Scotia), then slowly peels back its layers to reveal the sadness and scandals. It’s not PEYTON PLACE, but it’s not what Hildy is trying to sell to the rich “city folk”. They wisely limit her “talks to us” so as to not overdue the whimsy and get precious or cloying. It’s a slow, steady, simmering pot of drama with dashes of comedy and romance before it almost boils over into suspense and tragedy in the final act. Sure, we’ve seen those battling the booze many times before, but Weaver puts a fresh spin on Hildy’s struggles, making us root for her even as the vino flips a switch and she’s in full belligerent b*#l-buster mode. She’s the reason to “close the deal” on THE GOOD HOUSE.


3 Out of 4

THE GOOD HOUSE is now playing in theatres everywhere

CODA – Review

Emilia Jones as Ruby in “CODA,” premiering globally on Apple TV+ on August 13, 2021. Photo courtesy of Apple TV+

CODA is writer/director Sian Heder’s charming coming of age comedy/drama about the daughter of a family of scrappy, independent fishermen, who all happen to be deaf except her. CODA means “child of deaf adults” but it also has a musical meaning, making it the perfect title for a film about a teen with a passion for singing, something her family neither hears nor comprehends.

With deaf actors in the roles of the girl’s brother and parents, including Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin as her feisty mother, and wonderful performances all around, writer/director Sian Heder’s often-funny, warm tale of a family, different from the ordinary and yet not, is sure to bring smiles and delight audiences.

CODA has been praised by deaf communities both for casting deaf actors in the roles and for its realistic depiction of a deaf family. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, along with other awards, and is a true crowd-pleaser that also impresses with its authenticity. Shot on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts, it is an American remake of the 2014 French film LA FAMILLE BÉLIER with a strong, and surprisingly international, cast.

CODA certainly does feel authentic, but the film’s appeal goes beyond that, with its focus on believable family dynamics and distinctive personalities, where the parents’ deafness is just a part of the picture. CODA is, at its heart, a coming-of-age story more than anything, with a delightful performance by English actress Emilia Jones as a girl who loves her quirky family but has ambitions that are just different from family tradition.

Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is a 17-year-old living in the coastal Massachusetts town of Gloucester, where she is the only hearing member of her fishing family. Every morning before school, Ruby joins her father Frank (Troy Kotsur) and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant) on their fishing boat. Having Ruby on the boat allows them to monitor the radio for alerts and communicate with hearing fisherman and those who buy the catch on the dock when they return. At home, her mother (Marlee Matlin) does the bookkeeping for the family business. At school, Ruby faces some bullying but having best friend Gertie (Canadian actress Amy Forsyth) to count on helps.

As the film works through the family dynamics, it also explores Ruby’s budding interest in singing when she impulsively signs up for choir. The choir teacher Bernardo Villalobos (Mexican actor/comedian Eugenio Derbez), also know as Mr. V, is a quirky character but despite Ruby’s shyness, he recognizes her talent. Mr. V suggests she apply to a music college in Boston, even offering to coach her for the audition. Suiting the interests of his students in this fishing village, he picks a classic pop ballad to prepare for Ruby’s audition. For the upcoming school concert, the teacher also pairs her with Miles (Irish actor/musician Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a boy Ruby is interested in.

Ultimately, a crisis in the family business arises and Ruby is faced with a choice between her own ambitions and her family.

Writer/director Sian Heder hails from Massachusetts, although not from Gloucester, so she understands the strong family fishing tradition in this part of New England. The Rossi family has done this for generations, as dad Frank tells us, and they are counting on Ruby to help continue the family business, and even more so as the only hearing one in the family. That the rest of her family can’t hear the singing Ruby loves doing, just makes it all the more difficult for them to understand her passion.

In many ways, it is just like any family business, where a child develops an interest far outside its expectations and traditions. But Ruby’s ability to hear is a particularly useful skill for her deaf family, enabling them to keep more of their aloofness from the hearing community around them than they might otherwise. Her parents’ dependence on Ruby to do these things puts pressure on her and frustrates their son Leo, who reads lips, and wants to do more to help them deal with the hearing community the surrounds them.

While some elements of the story are familiar, the script handles them very well. But the real appeal of the film is its characters and the performances. All the actors are terrific, especially Emilia Jones as Ruby, who is a complete charmer, and completely believable, beaming with energy and high spirits, and bouncing back from set-backs with determination, despite her shyness and normal teen self-doubts. She is perfect in the ensemble scenes with the family, and both cute and self-possessed in the ones with love-interest Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Miles.

The scenes with the family are delightful, as they joke and tease. The use of sign language and Ruby’s combination of signing and speaking is handled so well that we never are confused about what is going on, and the snappy banter and warm quirky family scenes move smoothly at a brisk but clear pace.

By casting deaf actors, the film goes a long way towards getting things right from the start. As her parents, Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur are perfectly cast as a couple, and completely delightful, funny and loving and with a nice together-we-can -do-anything feeling. As Ruby’s older brother, Daniel Durant is excellent as well, presenting his struggle to assert himself as an asset to the family and his own independence, while engaging in playful sibling teasing with his sister.

Some of the funniest, most appealing scenes are with this lively family. Humor dominates the family scenes, along with a sassy, thumbing-their-noses-at-the-world independence. The family scenes are the film’s highlights, and the ensemble acting is wonderful. Marlee Matlin, unsurprisingly, shines as the still-sexy mom and Troy is appealing as Ruby’s rebellious but loving dad. The sibling squabbling between Ruby and Leo is spot on as well.

Unlike some deaf families, the Rossis do not live in a community of deaf people but of hearing ones, and see their deaf friends infrequently. The family lives apart from the rest of the community, in an appealing kind of close-knit, defiant independence. Dad comes from a long line of New England fishermen, mom was a model in her youth, and despite years of marriage, they can’t keep their hands off each other. Although their older child Leo, played well by Daniel Durant, is also deaf, he reads lips and feels much more comfortable interacting with the hearing community than his parents do. He would like to have a more active role in helping them but they continually turn to their hearing daughter for that role, much to Leo’s frustration.

As the film works through the family dynamics, it also explores Ruby’s growing ambitions and passion for singing, and her budding romantic interest in Miles.

Ruby’s quirky music teacher Mr. V, provides a big dose of humor. Mr. V is a bit of a character as well as an immigrant, in a town that seems to have few of them, and Eugenio Derbez creates one of the film’s funniest, most memorable characters who as much as outsider as Ruby feels she is in her small town. His outsider status and his skill as a teacher help her see beyond the fishing boat and her life with her loving but inward-looking family.

There are a lot of parallels to the immigrant experience to Ruby’s “outsider” family in CODA. One can see echos of stories of second-generation children, who have a foot in both worlds, the “new” and the “old” with Ruby, among them that she says that when she started school, kids teased her for her “deaf accent,” referring to the distinctive speech style of deaf people who are taught to speak, a nice detail which reveals that her loving parents did their best for their hearing daughter by speaking to her.

Subtle insights like that are woven smoothly into Heder’s well-written script. Heder’s script is well-crafted, effective, warm and entertaining, the direction is seamless and skillful, and the characters are memorable, particularly Ruby and her charmingly quirky family.

CODA’s characters are so appealing in their feisty quirkiness and family warmth, that it is the kind of film you will want to revisit. The story is both universal and unique to these characters, and that is a combination that is hard to beat.

CODA, the winner of the 2022 Oscars for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay and with Troy Kotsur winning for Best Supporting Actor, re-opens Friday, April 1, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema and is streaming on Apple TV+.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

WE ARE STILL HERE – The Review

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Some of the best and surprising films, not just in horror but all genres, are the ones that sneak up on you and catch you off guard. To be more specific, small films that seemingly come out of nowhere, without warning, and despite their having an otherwise mild-mannered appearance, turn out to have quite a surprising impact.

Written and directed by Ted Geoghagan, WE ARE STILL HERE is one of these little modestly made films that speak quietly but carry a big stick. WASH, as I will refer to it from here on out, is a superbly made film that does not strike you as such upon the first viewing. Instead, its a film that nags at you and eats away at your mind after the viewing has ended. For myself, I came away from my initial viewing thinking only mediocre thoughts of its content, but as I soon realized, I had been infected by the film’s mind-boring parasite that stuck with me and couldn’t let me go, allowing me to realize the subtle genius of the film.

Ted Geoghogan has embraced and brought into his film the very essence of the creepy, low-profile 80s horror flick. WASH is a contemporary film that deserves the recent trend toward nostalgic throwbacks. WASH needs a limited edition big box VHS release. That’s the overall reaction I had to this movie, being one of those rare gems that I stumbled upon in the back of the horror section on the top dusty shelf, nearly out of reach at the local mom and pop video rental shop. For some of you, this translates to a remarkably high appraisal of the film, and you devoted few understand what that means.

WASH tells the story of a middle-aged couple, Paul and Anne Sacchetti, who move to a remote house in the woods of New England after their teenage son has died in an automobile accident. Its winter and the overall tone of the film is cold, from the weather to the emotions and even the lighting and color palette chosen to illustrate the film visual tone. Paul and Anne are grieving, and in their misery fail to notice some strange behavior amidst them in the small town, which gives the small town charm and hospitality cliche an eerie twist when they realize that the house is not as cozy as they’d hoped.

Anne, played by veteran genre actress Barbara Crampton, is the first of the couple to notice the strange sounds and occurrences. She is the first to catch glimpses of figures, shadowing entities and flickering ghostly visions of horrifying things. At first fearing the grief is proving too much, Paul (played by Andrew Sensenig) too becomes aware that they are not alone and the house is home to something far removed from the pleasant welcoming of the locals. The difference in the couples’ interpretation is what initially sets this slow-burn ghost story in motion. Anne believes the apparition is her son, trying desperately to reach out and speak to his parents. Paul, on the other hand, being a more rationale man, doesn’t buy it and fears they are in danger.

Encouraged by the town folk to stay, and not wanting to upset his wife more than necessary, Paul allows the belief to preside for a while, but its the secrets house within the town that are as dangerous as the presence that calls the Sacchetti’s house home. WASH brings into being a common theme of H.P. Lovecraft’s works around a town’s collective involvement with strange occurrences. Geoghogan does this in a more digestible form than Lovecraft’s oft-dated settings, but the heart of it remains the same. We saw a similar trend in the 80s, one of the more recognizable being Stephen King’s CHILDREN OF THE CORN (1984) where a community comes together for a common good, which is really quite evil.

While we’re revisiting the 80s, I should point out another impressive element of WASH being the special effects makeup. The portrayal of the badly burned, nearly unrecognizable spirits is fantastic. The mix of traditional makeup effects and subtle digital enhancements give these entities chill-inducing realism, both in the quality and in the execution, that makes them appear as though they are forever smoldering in agonizing pain. Just the thought of it makes one itch and that’s the point. The eyes of the entities also harken back to an earlier era of supernatural horror flicks, namely of the Italian persuasion. The filmmaker’s soft spot for these film also becomes apparent with a few Easter eggs nods to such Italian classics as THE BEYOND and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, both from 1981.

As I mentioned previously, your initial viewing may set you up for an extended fright. A great deal of this is due to the masterful cinematography from genre-regular Karim Hussain, whose credits as cinematographer include HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, ANTIVIRAL and the TV Series HANNIBAL, none of which look the same, all of which look amazing. I can honestly say I am more creeped out by WE ARE STILL HERE now, as I write this review, than I was during or just after viewing the film. Perhaps that’s a testament to the film’s power, and credence in the film’s title as fair warning to its viewers.

WE ARE STILL HERE arrives in theaters and on VOD June 5th, 2015

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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