The Holdovers (2023)

You can guess the shape of The Holdovers from the poster: grumpy teacher, lonely kid, empty school, everybody thaws by New Year’s. Alexander Payne doesn’t try to surprise you, and at 133 minutes the middle dawdles like a kid taking the long way to class. It barely matters, because the people are so good. Paul Giamatti’s Hunham is a walking thesaurus of insults who’s secretly the loneliest guy on campus. Dominic Sessa plays Angus as sharp, mouthy and hurting, and the two of them bicker like they’ve been stuck together for years. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the quiet center as Mary, a cook carrying real grief with zero speeches about it. It even looks like it was shot in 1970. It made $48.8 million worldwide on a reported $13M, and holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. An 8.7 because it’s predictable the way a holiday dinner is: you know every dish and still go back for seconds. $53.49 says you spend the credits trying to remember your strictest teacher’s name, and it comes to you at 2 a.m.

What works: Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph feel like real people stuck in a real snowbound school, and the 1970 look is so convincing it feels like a lost film.

What doesn’t: The story goes exactly where you expect it to, and the middle section drifts longer than it needs to.

Who it’s for: Anyone who loves a grumpy-mentor story and wants a holiday movie that isn’t about Santa.