In The Holdovers, Alexander Payne returns to high school to deliver a subtle ode to justice, beauty, and the good.

Payne digs his satiric canines into the casual cruelties of the rich and entitled, the inherent emptiness of boarding school life, and the old-money world that feeds both.

Growing up in Omaha, one is acquainted with only a rarefied few who attended boarding school.  For those raised in the Northeast, boarding school is as common as a lawn jockey on a manicured estate.  For wild Irish Catholics like The Crotty and precious sons of Greek Orthodox parents like Alexander Payne, boarding schools hold an austere allure, made do…