Christmas Movies

 I see the British Board of Film Classification has conducted a poll to find the nation's favourite Christmas film. The results are pretty bizarre. I suppose if It's A Wonderful Life didn't exist, you might go for The Muppets Christmas Carol or Elf, or even, at a pinch, Home Alone – which in the event came top by a considerable margin – but mark what 'the nation' voted into the number two spot: Love Actually, one of the most powerful emetics in cinema history. Has the world gone mad? (Yes, of course it has, but what can you do?). 
As it happens, the other night I watched, on my son's recommendation, what turned out to be a very fine Christmas movie. This was The Holdovers, a comedy drama from 2023, directed by Alexander Payne and starring the great Paul Giamatti (whose performance as John Adams was one of the best I ever saw on TV). The Holdovers is set in 1970 at an upmarket boys' boarding school in Massachusetts, where Giamatti is Paul Hunham, a dedicated old-school classics teacher trying to uphold standards in an institution largely dedicated to raising money from rich parents and ensuring that even their stupidest sons never fail their exams. Hunham finds himself forced to stay behind through the Christmas break to supervise a handful of pupils who have nowhere to go, mostly because their parents don't want them around. This unhappy group soon dwindles to one – the unhappiest of them all, a troubled older boy called Angus Tully. The film follows the evolving relationship between Hunham and Tully and the black cafeteria manager  Mary Lamb, who has lost her son in Vietnam. As we learn more about these three, each of them in some way bereft, a fascinating drama (with plentiful moments of comedy) develops, one that kept me gripped through to the richly satisfying end – and with absolutely no Yuletide schmalz along the way. Highly recommended.