Just recently, it was Christmas, and I finally caught up on a holiday movie that I’d been putting off for a very long time. Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is a wonderful little tragicomedy that definitely strikes a chord in me. In an age when AI and CGI make us lose our grip on reality more and more, a modest film like The Holdovers comes at just the right time to remind us how characters can be portrayed like humans and stories be told in the most grounded way. Set in a wintery New England environment with a nostalgic retro aesthetic,…