The Holdovers – 7.9

A throwback movie in every sense from the reliably delightful Alexander Payne, it even made me like Paul Giamatti as the curmudgeonly prep school teacher with a well hidden heart of gold. As someone who spent three snowy Decembers at a boys’ school outside Boston in the ’60s, I felt a certain distant affinity for the Barton class of ’71, but the story told was pretty universal. Beyond thinking, They don’t make movies like this anymore, you felt here is the feel-good Christmas film for 2023.