Oscaar winner Kate Winslet directed and stars in “Goodbye June,” a sentimental and sharply-observed dramedy in which terrific performances and a couple of deeply emotional scenes overcome the glum predictability of it all.

Because everybody knows the holidays are a magnet for emotion, family quarrels brought to a head and tragedy.

“Goodbye June” has a lot of “The Family Stone” and more than a bit of “Love, Actually” and other seasonal favorites in its characters, situations and their responses to them. But casting Oscar winner Helen Mirren as the dying matriarch and title character, with BATFA winner Timothy Spall playing her dotty husband, Oscar nominees Toni Collette and Andrea Riseborough joining Winslet as their three daughters and Johnny Flynn (Mr. Knightley in the latest “Emma.”) as their son ensures that every role that counts pops off the screen and every tried-and-true sibling conflict rings true.

The holidays are coming and mother June is losing her struggle with her health. She collapses at the stove, and loving but tuned-out husband Bernie doesn’t hear the kettle boiling over after she does. Live-at-home son Connor, their youngest, is the one who reacts and takes action.

That means calling feuding sisters Jules (Winslet) and Molly (Riseborough). Jules is organized, earning a good living and raising three kids — two in private school, one special needs — pretty much on her own with an overseas-employed husband. Mol is immersed in a more chaotic state of affairs with a less gainfully employed spouse (Stephen Merchant) and kids of their own, including one they’ve named for that British theatrical and cinematic rogue Alfie and another Tibalt, either after the fantasy card game “devil” or trouble-maker from Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.”

Connor neglected to call oldest sister, crystals-and-sage-burning New Ager Helen, who lives abroad. But wherever she is (US? Germany?), she bolts for home at the news of this latest crisis.

The doctors have reached their “no more treatment we can offer” stage of their efforts to save the cancerous June. Comfort care or paliative care, in hospital or in hospice, she’s not likely to make it to Christmas.

Jules is rattled. Her rival sister Mol is enraged, furious at the mere mention of “hospice,” spitting blame and ripping the doctors — one of whom has the misfortune of being named Simon Cowell.

Mum reflects on the birds she saw out her window and suggests “Why don’t we have goose for Christmas?”

And when Helen gets there — tie-dyed, pregnant and “energy” reading — she’s the one who pushes for “make it Christmas” in the hospital room.

Connor chews his nails and bites his knuckles, Jules juggles, Mol fumes, Helen weeps and tries to keep the peace. Dad? He drinks his ale, watches his football and pretends “It was the pipes” when it turns out he forgot to turn off the sink water when they all scrambled to get June to the hospital, ruining their house.

The script sets up lots of conflicts to resolve, and gives us and the Cheshire family a voice of calm and reason and empathy in Nurse Angel (Fisayo Akinade), who is Mum’s co-conspirator when it comes to making peace between the two warring sisters.

Mirren beautifully captures June’s annoyance at the indignity of the end of life as many experience it in the western world . Privacy, solitude and keeping one’s basic bodily functions to oneself is off the table, adding a touch of humiliation to everything else the aged and infirm are coping with.

Spall gets a redemptive story arc, Riseborough and Collette and Winslet make the most of characters that are little more than “types” with each getting declarative monologues explaining their function in this narrative.

Flynn’s Connor might be the most interesting, mainly because he lets us see who and what he is in all this. We don’t need a speech to understand how rough it was for him growing up under a matriarchy that included three overbearing sisters. But screenwriter Jon Anders lazily takes side in the “nature or nurture” debate by making Connor gay.

And yet predictability has its virtues in comfort food cinema. It’s the very familiarity of these people and these situations that make “Goodbye June” appealing and easy to digest.

Winslet, as actress and director, gets us to the emotional core of the story with skill and compassion even as her movie introduces its emotional buttons, one by one, before punching each in turn with a care and sensitivity that make this “Goodbye” therapeutic as well as over-familiar.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough,
Fisayo Akinade, Stephen Merchant and Timothy Spall

Credits: Directed by Kate Winslet, scripted by Jon Anders. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54