Alexander Payne, multiple Oscar winner (“Sideways”), is making, by today’s standards, old-fashioned, 1970s-like movies.
Grade: B
Paul Giamatti plays crusty old crank of a teacher stuck at a boys’ boarding school over the Christmas holidays in 1970.
Circumstances leave only one student (Dominic Sessa, in a stunning debut), a ne’er-do-well broken in his own way.
They’re joined by the cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, also outstanding) for a broken-hearted holiday that goes deeper.
It’s heartbreaking, heartwarming and sentimental, just like holiday movies of yesteryear, such as Capra’s 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life, in depicting troubled pasts and shattered dreams, ignited by expectations from the Christmas.
Too bad that the film has the look and feel of that time period, without ever acknowledging its broader socio-political contexts.
