Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston
Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Kicked myself for missing it in the theaters, but Peacock is always there to pick up my self-imposed slack.
Did I Like It: I’ve been struck in recent years, and damn near feel like I’ve been choking on it in recent months, but somewhere along the line we absolutely lost all conception of what nostalgia means. I can’t remember the last time I went through any range of social media posts without some post algorithmically recommended to me that insisted the era in which Wendy’s served all of their food was the absolute pinnacle of western civilization*. Nothing was inherently better in those times; you were just younger then and weren’t terribly bothered by just how screwed up the world could already occasionally be.
That’s all to say that this film feels like perhaps the only object in years to understand the power of that wistful feeling we once properly identified as nostalgia. From its first moments dusting off the Universal logos that died with Back to the Future - Part III (1990) through opening credits that most people would see on TCM, the film manages to feel like a film that could have been released in some bygone year.
All of that is hard enough to do and more than enough to recommend the film. But it goes deeper than that. I may have never lived at a New England boarding school, but I did have a stunted view towards Christmas, and at least one teacher who might have thought I was bright but a little bit of a pain in the ass. There may be funnier Oscar contenders this year, but this one feels the most right.
*First of all, it wasn’t all that long ago. At least I don’t think it was…