Home for the Holidays (Jodie Foster, 1995). It’s wild that Holly Hunter’s proper big-screen follow-ups to her Oscar-winning turn in The Piano were the odd serial killer thriller Copycat and this comedy, released on successive weeks. Home for the Holidays casts Claudia Larson, a single mom who experiences a professional crisis right before making the mandatory, dispiriting visit to spend Thanksgiving with her family. The screenplay, credited to W.D. Richter, is a little wooly. That’s mostly a positive, thanks to director Jodie Foster’s generous approach with her cast. There are dandy performances by Charles Durning, Cynthia Stevenson, and, briefly but memorably, Claire Danes. This is from the glorious time when Hunter was the undisputed queen of personality-packed line readings, and yet Anne Bancroft manages to outpace her with a salty, pointed turn as the forthright matriarch of the clan. It’s funny, gently moving, and filled with moments of small grace.

Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025). Train Dreams is an absolute beauty in every respect: visually, emotionally, thematically. Adapted from the spare, powerful novella of the same name written by Denis Johnson, the film centers on Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a taciturn man who makes his living doing hard physical labor — railway construction, logging — through the early years of the twentieth century. He finds love with a local woman (Felicity Jones), endures tragedy, drifts from job to job, and generally lives a small, largely unnoticed American life. The film prospers through intense subtlety that’s an appropriate expression of its source material. Even the most harrowing experiences Robert endures are presented with laudable restraint. Director Cliff Bentley is careful and caring in the presentation of this drama, heightening the elegiac qualities of the film. The performances are wonderful, too. Edgerton operate with a presence that suggests the inner depth his character is reluctant to show, and there’s an especially nice supporting turn by William H. Macy, as one of the weary souls Robert encounters in his professional travels.

Merrily We Roll Along (Maria Friedman, 2025). I don’t know enough about the original staging of this Stephen Sondheim musical, the 1981 production that was a notorious Broadway flop, to make conclusive statements about its shortcomings. On the evidence of this blessedly preserved revival, it’s mind-boggling to me that Merrily We Roll Along was ever considered anything other than wonderfully inventive. George Furth wrote the original book for the show, which traces the often-rocky relationship of a trio of friends (played here by Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez) by presenting it in reverse chronological order so they journey from rueful regrets of old age to the energetic optimism of youth. Sondheim similarly upends the strictures of his chosen art form. Musical callbacks are now foreshadowing, and the whole score moves with a thrillingly disconcerting rhythm. I wish this filmed version spent a little more time taking in the entire stage. Director Maria Friedman, who held the same post for the stage version, presses in for too many closeups, losing the full razzle-dazzle in the process. Just plopping the camera in a seat third row center and letting it run might have have been preferable.