Tag: Movie

NY Times (Reggie Ugwu), January 7, 2024: Paul Giamatti Has Done the Reading. For his role in “The Holdovers,” set at a prep school not unlike the one he attended, the hyper-literate actor mined his own dormant memories.

…”‘His latest role, as Paul Hunham in “The Holdovers” — a solitary and cantankerous New England boarding-school teacher saddled with babysitting duty over Christmas break — adds a number of memorable monologues to the actor’s oeuvre. But Giamatti also imbues the character with a deep well of melancholy and thinly disguised tenderness, traits that tend to reveal themselves in wordless, physical gestures: a crumpling of the chin, a narrowing of one eye.

“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all of the little micro-thoughts that happen in between,” said Alexander Payne, the director of “The Holdovers,” who reteamed with Giamatti nearly 20 years after “Sideways.” “You could hire him to play the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he’d do a great job with it.” …