Alexander Payne’s melancholy masterpiece is witty and bittersweet, and Leslie Nielsen’s 80s spoof classic is brilliantly ridiculous

We don’t get a new Alexander Payne film very often, so when they appear they should be cherished. Especially as he’s back with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti, on fine misanthropic form here as a classics teacher at a New England boys’ boarding school in 1970. Widely disliked, Paul Hunham is ordered to stay on site over the Christmas holidays to supervise the children who can’t go home, most problematically Dominic Sessa’s smart, sardonic teenager Angus. Also stuck there is grieving canteen manager Mary (an Oscar-winning Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Forced into uncomfortable proximity, the three slowly eke out an understanding in a witty and bittersweet story.
8 November, Friday, 11.35am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere