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### The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder

Winter on the East Coast is cold, dark, and long, and stepping out of the biting cold into the warmth of one’s home is a relief like no other. Some though, like the lead character of “The Apartment,” C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), have nowhere to go — although his circumstances are rather unique. The affable if lily-livered office worker is lonely and it’s the holidays, but he has found himself in the habit of loaning out his Upper West Side apartment to the higher-ups at his company for their extramarital trysts.

Soon enough, Baxter is contacted by personnel director Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who tells Baxter that he will be promoted if he allows Sheldrake use of the apartment. Baxter agrees, and asks an elevator girl, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), out for that night. She agrees, but ends up standing him up for a date with none other than Sheldrake, with whom she has had an off-and-on affair.

Both characters are lonely, and the decision to set the movie over the winter holidays (major plot events happen on Christmas and New Year’s Eve respectively) reflects their state of mind. Though these holidays are typically times to rejoice with your loved ones, Baxter and Kubelik instead endure a series of heartbreaking rejections and setbacks in their relationships with other people.
 
Lemmon’s fantastic performance and the jokes packed densely into the script manage to transform what seems like a somewhat miserable plot, however, into — miraculously — a comedy, and a great one at that. Though “The Apartment” has been overshadowed by other romantic comedies from the same period like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Some Like it Hot,” it is one of the best films to come out of the 1960s and deserves a reputation as not only a great film but a perfect one for the winter holidays.

### The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) dir. Wes Anderson
Though it does not once mention Christmas, Hanukkah, or New Year’s, there is no doubt in my mind that “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is a film for the winter holidays. It is a story within a story within a story, established in an opening sequence of a woman visiting the grave of an author who wrote a book about his visit to the titular hotel, where he was told a story by the proprietor, Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori). The eccentricity in the framing of the story is present in virtually every other aspect of the film, from the pastel color palette, to each frame’s stilted symmetry, to the miniature models of the hotel. Anderson is one of the most distinct directors of our age, and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is an extravagant aesthetic indulgence, both visually beautiful and absurdly unnatural.

The bulk of the story follows Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a prim, poetry-loving concierge at the Grand Budapest who rules stringently over the staff and dotes on the elderly female patrons. Though there is a plot, involving a stolen painting, prison escape, and secret society of hotel concierges, it takes the back burner for the film’s more pressing thematic concerns, particularly nostalgia. Though the range of confectionary colors and dollhouse-esque sets evoke childhood aesthetics (further evidence of it being a holiday movie), more specifically, the somewhat ridiculous yet eminently respectable Gustave is a dandy committed entirely to the kind of high-end service that, as chronicled by the gradual degradation of the hotel, was in its dying throes at the time.

Though the Grand Budapest is located in a fictional Republic of Zubrowka, the phases it goes through are not unfamiliar to the 21st-century viewer: the colorful, glamorous 1930s giving way to a Nazi-equivalent occupation, and then finally the Iron Curtain-era dilapidation and grayness. Despite its highly unnatural and stylized composition and the layer of fiction separating our world from Anderson’s, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” imparts serious messages about fascism and art. It is also wildly entertaining, with a pitch-perfect comedic performance from Fiennes alongside Anderson’s crew of regulars, including Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.



### The Holdovers (2023) dir. Alexander Payne

“History is not simply the study of the past, it is an explanation of the present,” the curmudge only teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) says in “The Holdovers,” a snowy dramedy set in a New England boarding school over winter break. Indeed, when a Focus Features logo customized to look retro flickers onto the screen, it’s made clear that “The Holdovers” is a film concerned with the past. Shot digitally, then edited to emulate film, it’s composed like a film from the 1970s, with Cat Stevens songs playing quietly over long shots of empty school halls and snowy Boston. But the quietly moving pain of the three lead characters, along with the unlikely bonds they form because of it, make this story still deeply resonating in the present day.

When Hunham fails the son of a major donor, his administration-prescribed punishment is to stay at the school and supervise the unruly group of boys “holding over,” the sort of rich, insubordinate brats he despises. Soon, however, most of the holdovers are picked up by one student’s magnanimous father, leaving only a student of Hunham’s named Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). The head cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), grief-stricken from her son’s death in the Vietnam War, joins them, and the three form an awkward trio, with each member initially concerned only with their own holiday melancholy. Through the events of the film, the three form a genuine bond that transcends their unfortunate circumstances.

The film is anchored by the three strong lead performances, particularly Randolph’s, who has been given the rawest emotional moments and does beautifully with them. It’s a quiet movie, fuzzy around the edges like childhood Christmas memories, and though the plot may not exactly move at breakneck speed I always find myself wishing at the end that Hunham, Angus, and Mary’s stories could last just a little bit longer. “The Holdovers” is a new, offbeat addition to my December movie rotation that manages to be heartwarming without being saccharine and melancholy without being maudlin, despite occasionally falling prey to holiday-movie clichés. 




Unofficial holiday movies

Cyrus Shams is waiting for a miracle. This is, at its
core, the driving force behind Kaveh Akbar’s 2024 debut
novel “Martyr!,” which opens with a flickering
lightbulb in Cyrus’ bedroom. He interprets it
as a message from God to quit drinking and
pull his life together.

A year and a half later, he’s finding
that his newfound sobriety makes
little difference in his existential
unrest. He’s an aspiring poet, but has a
day job as a medical actor, pretending
to be dying so that medical students
can practice their bedside manner. Both
of his parents are dead: his father due to
a stroke and his mother in the missile strike
from the U.S.S. Vincennes that in real life shot
down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988. Cyrus has
grown obsessed with the latter event and
the idea of a meaningful death: his
mother was a martyr, he imagines,
and he will be too.

This preoccupation takes him
to a performance artist living out
her last days with terminal cancer
as an exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum.
Through his conversations with her, he gains a deeper
understanding of his identity as an Iranian-American
man, his long, complicated family history, and what exactly
brought him to her in the first place.

Chapter epigraphs contain excerpts from Cyrus’ latest
project: a “Book of Martyrs” written on a Word document
containing elegies for Hypatia of Alexandria, Qu
Yuan, and Cyrus’ mother, among others. “Dreams
give us voices, visions, ideas, mortal terrors, and
departed beloveds,” he writes in one entry. “I want
to die killing the president,” in another. Akbar’s
background is in poetry, and it’s in these entries
that he’s able to fully flex his lyrical muscles.
His prose is nothing to scoff at, though; the
English language is a sandbox for Akbar, words
and phrases molded or manipulated with a kind
of graceful ease that speaks to more experience
with prose than he has as a debut novelist.

Cyrus floats in a strange middle ground between
Iranian and American, too much of one to
belong fully to the other, complicated
particularly because of the American
involvement in the death of Cyrus’
mother. Was she a martyr? Was she a
victim? Cyrus can’t seem to decide.
The book deals in dualities: Iranian
and American, alive and dead (the
dedication is “for the martyrs, who
live”), hilarious and deadly serious.

Cyrus is both self-loathing and self-obsessed, fascinated
by his own existential misery. He trudges through the
novel in a haze of semi-suicidal ennui, methodically
ignoring everyone who cares about him. Though Cyrus’
seemingly endless lamentations about sobriety, God, and
a culture that he opines about more than engages with get
old, his perspective is not the only one given time in the
novel. Instead, it shutters between various members of his
family, with his mother, father, and uncle given a particular
spotlight; his best friend Zee; and himself. Though I
typically prefer the immersion that novels narrated by one
single protagonist give, the multiple perspectives offered
in “Martyr!” allow the reader to have an understanding of
the larger circumstances at play in the plot than just Cyrus’
cynical musings.

“Martyr!,” as suggested by the title, is not a light read, but
it isn’t self-serious either. Often, the dialogue edges into
overly tongue in cheek territory, and the plot, too, toes the
line of unbelievability, but the book maintains a shrewd
self-awareness that helps ground it in reality and mark it
as an enjoyable read nonetheless.

Though Cyrus’ life may seem worlds away from the
average Princeton High School student’s, his story contains
valuable insights into a fundamental human curiosity:
what we’re here to do. At the heart of Akbar’s novel is the
question “What constitutes a meaningful life (and death)?”
Cyrus’ initial stance is living “perfectly enough” without
leaving “a ripple of pain” behind him, like “an Olympic
diver knifing splashlessly into the pool.” But clearly, just not
doing anything wrong isn’t the same as doing something
right. Instead, Akbar proposes, though art may never be
sufficient in correcting the world’s many shortcomings, it
can give purpose and beauty to life, and isn’t that enough?

“Martyr!”: a thoughtful reflection on humanity

**NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) directed by F.W. Murnau**

Blood, coffins, and bats: nothing says Halloween quite
like vampires, and no film has portrayed the vampire quite
like F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.”
In this illicit adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel
“Dracula,” Max Schreck stars as the nightmarish Count
Orlok, a performance so believable that it spawned legions
of conspiracy theories about Schreck’s own possible
vampiric origins.

Filmed in stark black-and-white, “Nosferatu” follows
a young real estate agent named Thomas Hutter, played
by Gustav von Wangenheim, who travels to Transylvania
in order to sell a house to a mysterious count. The film
is truly a product of its time: an indescribable terror of
"The Other" pervades every frame, the disease-bearing
rats ubiquitous in the film reminiscent of those once
infesting the battlefield trenches.

Despite clearly being from a different era, the
nightmarish atmosphere, excellent lead performances,
and easily transmutable story lend it a timeless quality—
it’s no wonder that it has yielded a myriad of remakes
over time. The latest of these, Robert Egger’s 2024 film
of the same name starring Bill Skarsgård as the titular
vampire and Lily-Rose Depp as Hutter’s wife Ellen, is
proof of the enduring legacy of Nosferatu as one of the
most influential achievements in the history of cinema
and the horror genre.

Seeing this movie performed with a live score to a soldout audience at the Princeton Garden Theatre last October
was one of my best moviegoing experiences. I love this
movie not only for the scares and storyline but also its
occasional silliness and, ultimately, the influence that it
continues to have on film over a century after its release.

**AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) directed by John Landis**

Foggy English moors. Local superstitions. Practical
effects good enough to award it the first ever Academy
Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. “An American
Werewolf in London” may have been poorly received
upon initial release, but in the years following its release, it
has grown into a cult classic of the horror-comedy genre.
In it, college students David Kessler, played by David
Naughton, and Jack Goodman, played by Griffin Dunne,
are backpacking across the north of England when they
stop for the night at a pub, where they are cautioned of a
mysterious creature who lurks the local moors.

Neither heeds these warnings, however, and what
follows is a surreal, grisly comedy of errors. Naughton
gives a great performance, transforming from an average
good-humored New Yorker into a snarling man-beast.
Though Rick Baker’s practical effects are deservedly the
most famous aspect of the film, the rest of the movie is
up to par. The omnipresent humor balances out the often
startling violence that the third act dives into head-first,
and the friendship between Naughton and Dunne’s
characters, along with a relationship that Naughton forms
later on, provides a strange emotional core to the movie.

I love this movie not only for being Griffin Dunne’s
breakout role but also for the bizarre, gruesome, giddy
amusement-park ride it is. “An American Werewolf in
London” is a highly entertaining film that successfully
satirizes some elements of the horror genre while dutifully
paying homage to others.

**THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) directed by Jonathan Demme**

There are few cinematic characters who haunt the public
consciousness quite like Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Hannibal
Lecter. Eerie and restrained in his famously Academy
Award-winning 16 minutes of screentime, Hopkins is a
force of nature, staring down the camera with a chilling
intensity. Despite his undeniable excellence, however,
the film is Jodie Foster’s; playing the hard-working FBI
trainee Clarice Starling, Foster adopts her secondhand
briefcase and West Virginian accent with ease.

Throughout the film, Starling struggles with the sexism
imbued in the culture of her chosen profession and her
past as a poor orphan growing up on her cousin’s farm
following the death of her parents.Strangely enough,
Lecter seems to be the only person in her life to respect
(or, at least, understand) her unfortunate circumstances.
The strange chemistry between the two is a kind of
sinister symbiosis that pushes the tightly-paced plot along:
Starling is assigned to interview the incarcerated Lecter
under the guise of a psychological survey. The assignment
quickly reveals itself to be a ploy by her supervisor, Jack
Crawford, to get Lecter’s professional opinion on serial
killer Buffalo Bill. Intense close-ups on the lead actors’
faces famously characterize the interview scenes, but the
camerawork is deft and stylish throughout, drawing the
tension out to highwire suspense in the gripping third act.

Though I do harbor a particular fondness for all
Hannibal Lecter adaptations, I think that “The Silence of
the Lambs” is the best among them. Though the film is
now famous to the point of innumerable parodies, to me
Hopkins’ Lecter has never lost his ability to frighten. The
first (and only) horror movie to ever receive the Academy
Award for Best Picture, “The Silence of the Lambs”
remains a classic of the genre that will be celebrated for
decades to come.

Classic horror movies to add to your Halloween watchlist

The PHS technology department made significant 
changes for the 2025–2026 school year, including issuing 
new MacBooks for all students and with them, a ban on 
several popular sites like ChatGPT.


Towards the end of last school year, students returned 
their old MacBooks and chargers. Then, in August, students 
had to schedule an appointment in the afternoon to pick 
up their new device, the 2022 MacBook Air. PPS Chief 
Technology Officer Todd MacDonald explained that this 
cycle occurs every few years.


“The devices have significant battery deterioration [over 
time which is] the major issue. [And] as you can expect, 
students do beat up the devices over time. These devices 
... require a lot of maintenance as battery life diminishes 
[and] it [eventually] becomes a situation where it’s a lot 
easier for us to replace the whole fleet [of MacBooks] than 
support one type of device over time,” said MacDonald.


The old MacBooks were sold to a third-party vendor, 
and the tech department used money acquired from that 
sale to buy the new devices. However, because the Apple 
brand is costly, the district had little flexibility in which 
model they could buy. In part to account for the cost of 
the MacBooks, the technology department switched device 
managers from a relatively expensive program called Jamf 
to a less costly manager called Mosyle. 


Mosyle gives the technology team a better view of what 
sites are being accessed, and through this, they can decide 
which sites can be whitelisted for students to view. However, 
as MacBook distribution has only recently been finalized, 
the technology team has not had the opportunity to begin 
adjusting the filtering system of the device manager.


“[PHS students] may have experienced that they feel 
like the devices are locked down more. It’s not necessarily 
true. There’s a new filter in place, and some filters have 
different categories ... It hasn’t been tweaked yet based on 
what’s being requested. If students are requesting access 
[to a website] ... they should let us know because we review 
that [request] with the administration, with the curriculum 
office, and we’re in the business of trying to make learning 
accessible,” said MacDonald.


PPS has, however, decided to implement Mosyle’s 
academic dishonesty restrictions, resulting in many AI 
or AI-related sites being banned, including ChatGPT. 
Assistant Principal Rashone Johnson said that the ban is 
a result of complaints and conversations among teachers, 
administrators, and the Board of Education.


“We want you to be able to think critically. We want 
you to know how to do the proper research to be able to 
support whatever it is that you’re writing about or your 
opinion on something. [And] we want those thoughts to 
come from you,” said Johnson.


However, not all students are in complete agreement 
with the decision.


“I think [the new system] is a net positive in the sense 
of security, but it can also ... be used in an oppressive way. 
[Though] banning ChatGPT does stop students from using 
generative AI for school assignments, [it] also ... cuts off 
students’ capabilities for more creative uses of AI, similarly 
to how stopping students from using a calculator [in] math 
class just leaves them not being able to understand the full 
function of a calculator,” said Shriram Joshi ’28.


The PHS administration has installed AI usage posters 
specifying different levels of acceptable AI use, ranging 
from “none” to “AI-generated with editing,” in many 
classrooms, with the vast majority of teachers enforcing the 
“none” category. They administration created the posters 
based on feedback from teachers on AI usage by students.


“It gives us a common language that helps teachers 
discuss what level of AI is acceptable in their class, and 
it allows students to also think about how they’re using 
AI, whether they’re using it as a tool to supplement and 
enhance what they’re doing, or they’re using it as a crutch,” 
said U.S. history teacher Dr. Rick Miller. 


Anna Soriano currently has her English I and English 
III students write essays in class to prevent the usage of 
AI, though she does acknowledge the power of the new 
technology. 


“We use all sorts of assistive technology to help us 
throughout the day. I think that we need to prepare students 
for what’s coming, and they’re going to walk into a world 
where AI is everywhere,” said Soriano.

photo: Katherine Chen

Agatha Patten ‘27 and Benji Caswell Klein ‘27 work 
on their computers during Tiger Time.

Agatha Patten's Work