The Holdovers

Date: 03/12/2024 Times: 7:30 pm - 9:45 pm

Here’s one we’ve been keeping for the festive season, a lovely feel good movie, set at Christmas time, featuring a superb Paul Giamatti performance as a stubbornly unlovable and difficult man. The film won countless awards earlier this year and Da’Vine Joy Randolph swept the board of the big three, winning Best Supporting actress in the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes. Paul Giamatti won a Golden Globe for Best Actor. The third actor in the trio of main parts, a new face, Dominic Sessa, more than holds his own with the award winners. It has been that rare bird, a big hit with critics and audiences.

From acclaimed director Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Nebraska, Sideways), The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them, a damaged, brainy troublemaker (Sessa) and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Randolph). The sympathy, richness and gentleness of this picture are a marvel, a grownup drama for grownup people.

Venue: William Loveless Hall