The Holdovers & Napoleon

In "The Holdovers," director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti work together for the first time since "Sideways" back in 2004. HCC film professors Marie Westhaver and Mike Giuliano agree in this podcast episode that they have great director-actor chemistry in this character study about a New England boarding schoolteacher tasked with watching the several students who are not able to return home for the Christmas break. There are equally fine performances by Dominic Sessa as a student, Da'Vine Joy Randolph as the school cook, and Carrie Preston as a school administrator. This is one of the best films of the year. Less successful is director Ridley Scott's biopic "Napoleon." Although there are impressively staged battlefield sequences, the film is just a chronicle of one thing after another in Napoleon's busy life. Scott unfortunately mixes actual events with entirely fictionalized scenes, and there is almost no historical analysis. Joaquin Phoenix's brooding performance never really lets us inside Napoleon's personality, but at least Vanessa Kirby makes an intriguing impression as the Empress Josephine. So, think of this disappointing spectacle as Ridley Scott's Waterloo.