Focus Features brought the goods to CinemaCon. In addition to a new trailer from “the Marvel of specialty box office” Wes Anderson for Asteroid City and the trilogy capper My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Focus played trailers for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls. Unfortunately, the studio didn’t release trailers publicly, but we can at least share what we saw.
Payne’s The Holdovers sees the director stepping back from the high-concept sci-fi satire of Downsizing, returning to high school for the first time since Election, and bringing back Paul Giamatti for the first time since Sideways. The brief clip looks like a throwback to 70s slice-of-life comedies, complete with heavy film grain that was very apparent on the giant screen at CinemaCon. The Holdovers follows a group of prep school students who don’t go home for Christmas and a disgruntled Paul Giamatti, sporting a constantly moving lazy eye, as a cranky teacher who goes too far in his verbal abuse of the kids. After telling a student (Dominic Sessa) that no one loves him, Giamatti discovers that the student’s father is dead. The pair strikes an unlikely friendship with the help of a school nurse played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
The coming-of-age story comes out in limited release on November 10 and everywhere on November 22.
As for Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, anyone missing that classic Coen brothers style will be happy. This ain’t The Tragedy Of Macbeth. Drive-Away Dolls, written by Coen and Tricia Cooke and directed by Coen, puts the dumbasses doing crime a lá Burn After Reading and the Coens’ trademark frenetic camera work into a college road comedy. Based on the few moments shown today, Drive-Away Dolls could better explain how the Coens style came into being.
The plot is pure nonsense: Two college students come into possession of a gangster’s briefcase with some MacGuffin in it and take a road trip to Florida to avoid being killed. Drive-Away Dolls stars Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Bill Camp, and Matt Damon.
The movie speeds into theaters on September 22.
