Comparing Alexander Payne to Wes Anderson in The New York Times, the film critic Wesley Morris writes that the former’s “milieu is world-weary, harsh, slouched, bluer-collared, grayer.” He makes this point in his review of The Holdovers, Payne’s newest movie, which stars Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (High Fidelity), and the newcomer Angus Tully. Giamatti plays a high-school teacher who specializes in ancient civilizations, has a glass eye, and is said to “read everything but the room.” He is tasked with looking after the “holdovers”—students unable to return home for Christmas vacation. Tully is one of those students and Randolph is the cafeteria’s head cook. Set in a New England prep school in the 1970s, this is a comic, layered tale of loneliness, adventure, hardship, and connection. —Jeanne Malle