The Holdovers

Just four years old and already a classic: Paul Giamatti and his fellow cast-members shine in Alexander Payne’s tale of a boarding school teacher who gets into a conflict with an intelligent but petulant pupil. The story unfolds at Christmas 1971, with the Vietnam War raging in the background. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a somewhat grumpy, introverted history teacher at a boarding school in New England, where the elite’s children are prepared for lucrative careers in the 1%’s network. Hunham has to spend the Christmas Holidays at school to supervise the children who can’t go home, one of whom is the rebellious teen Angus.