The Holdovers: dir Alexander Payne (2023)

A warm-hearted and thoughtful holiday story of three lonely, shipwrecked people who find support in the most unlikely of places. A curmudgeonly teacher (Paul Giamatti) is forced to remain on campus at a New England prep school over Christmas to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go; as the days pass, the grumpy prof forms an unexpected bond with smart-but-troubled student Angus (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). The result is a surprisingly engaging and really rather sweet Christmas comedy-drama.