Film Previews

“Priscilla”

R | 117 minutes
Director: Sofia Coppola
Writers: Sofia Coppola, Sandra Harmon, Priscilla Presley
Stars: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen

When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) meets Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy and fame.

“What Happens Later”

R | 104 minutes
Director: Meg Ryan
Writers: Steven Dietz, Kirk Lynn, Meg Ryan
Stars: Meg Ryan, David Duchovny

Two ex-lovers, Bill (David Duchovny) and Willa (Meg Ryan) get snowed in at a regional airport overnight. Indefinitely delayed, Willa, a magical thinker, and Bill, a catastrophic one, find themselves just as attracted to and annoyed by one another as they did decades earlier. But as they unpack the riddle of their mutual past and compare their lives to the dreams they once shared, they begin to wonder if their reunion is mere coincidence or something more enchanted.

“The Holdovers”

R | 133 minutes
Director: Alexander Payne
Writer: David Hemingson
Stars: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa

Nobody likes teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) — not his students, not his fellow faculty, not the headmaster, who all find his pomposity and rigidity exasperating. With no family and nowhere to go over Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul remains at school to supervise students unable to journey home. After a few days, only one student holdover remains — a troublemaking 15-year-old named Angus (Dominic Sessa), a good student whose bad behavior threatens to get him expelled. Joining Paul and Angus is head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) — an African-American woman who caters to sons of privilege and whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam. These three very different shipwrecked people form an unlikely Christmas family sharing comic misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England. The real journey is how they help one another understand that they are not beholden to their past and they can choose their own futures. ♦