Very few recent movies emerge as potential holiday perennials, but The Holdovers plays like it’s already been the Christmas movie of choice for families going back five decades, a heartwarming tale of overcoming Christmas loneliness by finding others to be lonely with. Its attempts to emulate a soft-focus idea of 70s cinema are just an affection (albeit a pleasant one if you enjoy watching movies that, for one shot, can look like Gordon Willis or Vilmos Zsigmond), but you can’t get too worked up about it when given three central performances as good as these. The pleasures of Paul Giamatti as a melancholy curmudgeon with a secret heart of gold are obvious, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph asserts her place among the best in the biz, but you’ve never heard of second lead Dominic Sessa before and he steals the movie out from both of them.

The Apu Trilogy 4K (Criterion)
The Facts of Murder (Radiance)
Forced Vengeance (Shout Factory)
The Holdovers (Universal)
The Marsh King’s Daughter (Lionsgate)
Please, Not Now! (Kino)
Popi (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Romantic Comedy (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)