How to watch The Holdovers – is it streaming?
Focus FeaturesThe Holdovers has been nominated for five Oscars, so here’s how to watch the latest Alexander Payne/Paul Giamatti joint on streaming, plus any Netflix details.
The Academy Award nominations were announced yesterday, and new Christmas classic The Holdovers was nominated for five Oscars – Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Best Original Screenplay (David Hemingson), and Best Editing (Kevin Tent).
Of his nom, Giamatti said in a statement: “I’m genuinely flabbergasted by this morning’s news. It’s such an incredible honor to be acknowledged by the Academy like this. And such an amazing thrill to be a part of such a wonderful Hollywood tradition.”
So where can you watch the comedy-drama in the run-up to those awards being handed out? Read on to find out…
Where to stream The Holdovers
The Holdovers is streaming exclusively on Peacock. On top of that, the film is available for rent and purchase on digital platforms.
This should come as a relief to anyone who missed The Holdovers during its brief stint in cinemas. The film screened in limited theaters in the US on October 27, before expanding for its wide release across the country in mid-November.
Is The Holdovers on Netflix?
No, The Holdovers is not on Netflix. Should that change in the future, we will update this article.
And if you are looking for The Holdovers in the UK, it’s currently on general release in cinemas, so don’t expect to see it streaming anytime soon.
What is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers about?
The Holdovers revolves around a boarding school in New England, where the town’s limpet professor (Paul Giamatti) is saddled with looking after the leftover children during the Christmas break. This includes Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a sharp student with a penchant for pissing people off.
Via an unfortunate twist of fate, they both end up alone for the holidays alongside the school’s cafeteria chief Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who’s grieving her son after his death in the Vietnam War.
It’s already being touted for multiple Oscars, with Giamatti tipped for a lead actor nomination – if not a win, if he can beat the likes of Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer and Bradley Cooper for Maestro. In our four-star review, we called it a “comedy-drama that delivers both comedy and drama, and a festive film that might just be a new Christmas classic.”
However, Payne isn’t too keen on the apparent comfort viewers seem to be finding in the film. Speaking to Vanity Fair, he said he felt a bit “nauseous” about people describing it as “cozy.”
“I thought I was just making a decent movie about people,” Payne explained. “Well, you’re the first person I’m getting to ask: What is it that felt cozy to you or warm? Is it the texture of the film, or the quality of the human relations presented? What was it? […] We can talk about two things. One is this quality that it has, perhaps, that we can pierce our natural assumptions about others, given new knowledge. That everybody’s got a story.”
“You meet someone, you make certain assumptions fairly or unfairly, usually unfairly,” he continued. “But then the more you get to know the person, the more you see the humanity underneath. And then by extension, in this film, if there’s a feeling that seemingly very disparate people can, with time, discover some common humanity — that’s a nice thing. I wouldn’t necessarily use the word cozy though. Why do you use the word cozy?”
