'The Holdovers' is downbeat comedy at its finest

Christmas, 1970. In a remote boarding school in Massachusetts, curmudgeonly teacher Paul Hunnham (Paul Giamatti) is left to tend to the students that are holding over the holiday period. As some eventually leave on an impromptu skiing trip, Paul remains with the school's head chef, Mary (Da'vine Joy Randolph) and Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), an angry student whose mother (Gillian Vigman) has effectively abandoned him in the school while she enjoys a honeymoon in St. Kitts. Forced to live together, the trio begin to thaw their icy exteriors...