When observing the array of films being nominated and winning major awards, Alexander Payne’s 2023 release The Holdovers is a standout and not for being over-the-top, packed with action and special effects.
It finds company with the likes of Poor Things and Oppenheimer, but it couldn’t be more different.
This Christmas comedy-drama is set in a New England boarding school in 1970.
Bored with life, Classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) gets stuck looking after the kids who can’t go home for the break.
Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Rudolph), the cafeteria manager, joins him, along with troubled teenager Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mother cancels on him, forcing him to stay at school.