So we’re at a fancy New England boarding prep school in the Vietnam War era, and it’s Christmas. Most of the students go home with their families for the holidays, but a few kids don’t have great family situations and so are staying behind, under the watchful, disciplinarian eye of their classics teacher (and the more sympathetic eye of the cook).

The classics professor is Paul Giamatti, and he is a giant asshole. He envisions himself upholding the grand old academic traditions of an older and better world, but quite clearly just doesn’t like his students and treats them with the contempt he thinks they deserve. The kids are mostly kinda fuck-ups in one way or another, though more sympathetic just due to being kids.

After a bit, the situation shifts so that there is now just one kid remaining, and now the movie is going to be about that kid, that teacher, and that cook as they go through the Christmas season together. Will they learn more about each other, and see that everyone is more complicated and sympathetic than they initially seemed? Will they experience a growing sense of their shared humanity through the emotional crucible of these few weeks? Will the experiences they have together change them in significant ways?

Obviously yes, that’s what the movie is doing. But I don’t want my flip summary here to make you think that it’s trite or boring, because it’s very well done. Giamatti is always compelling, the cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is great, and the kid (Dominic Sessa) is pretty good. The movie really shines at evoking its period piece nature, feeling like a ’70s movie right from its opening studio logo. If it’s not exactly breaking new conceptual ground, it’s still giving us a character drama with great characters, acting, and sense of place.