What to Watch at Thanksgiving

Picture this: you’ve devoured the Thanksgiving meal and you’re basking in the tryptophane-induced-near-coma-bliss that sides of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, potentially something green, and maybe mac and cheese do nothing to counteract. Maybe your meal was at like 3 p.m. to accommodate some guests’ travel plans; maybe it was late at night. Either way, once the cleaning is done everyone might find themselves settled on the couch, and perhaps not everyone is a football fan. To further complicate matters, there’s only so many sports being played during the extended Thursday-Sunday Thanksgiving weekend, and a plethora of leftovers means a plethora of downtime ahead. You need something to watch, whether it's by yourself or with the extended family. I’m here to help.

If you just want the list of nearly 50 options to get the wheels turning and nothing else, skip to the end.

Small caveat: some of you might have younger children that have, let’s say, specific requests and you’ll just have to cave. I get it.

What’s not on this list? As always, to each their own, but when I’ve just housed an aggressive amount of buttery goodness, I’m not really looking for anything too severe. Plenty of people find comfort in horror movies, and one of my perennial favorites that fits the late-November vibe is The Shining. I’m also not looking for anything too depressing, although there will be elements of that in some of my recommendations. Also, stuff that is too Spring or Summer won’t be here, nor will anything Christmas. Thanksgiving is its own holiday, folks!

Dad-core cinema. There’s a good chance Dad, or even Grandad, might be sitting around the couch with you, looking for something that might not necessarily be new but does scratch the right itch for them – bonus points if they take a quick nap for 10 minutes but still claim it as a “great movie”:

• Old War Films: maybe Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down or The Hurt Locker are too rattling, The Thin Red Line is too abstract, but from the late 50’s to the late 70’s there was a bumper crop of star-studded, near-encyclopedic recreations of actual battles that are perfect for the dad who likes a good history lesson. My two favorites that make a great double-header: The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, representing pre-Vietnam lauding of American military victory and post-Vietnam cynicism and futility, respectively.

• The Stalwarts: Dad’s seen this before but will be pleasantly surprised that you’re up on them. Options feature Robert Redford (All the President’s Men, Jeremiah Johnson), Paul Newman (The Hustler), or both (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), John Wayne (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers), or Clint Eastwood (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly or Dirty Harry)

• The New Favorites: Ford V Ferrari, Argo, Moneyball, Bridge of Spies, The Martian, First Man

Cozy Romance. Sometimes there’s nothing like a (few) gentle standbys to unwind after a day that involves worrying about when stuff goes in and out of the oven, where everyone’s gonna sit, and if reaching for the turkey yet again is a responsible decision. You don’t have to think, just let the following wash over you yet again. In fact, they speak for themselves:

• Musicals: Singin’ in the Rain, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, La La Land

• Golden Age Hollywood: Casablanca, The Apartment, It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Some Like it Hot

• The Meg Ryan Trilogy: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail

The Right ~Aesthetic~. Everything I’ve listed so far has at least some airs of a fall or communal aesthetic, but the following picks are for when you really need to vibe out in the final week of November:

• The Wes Anderson Corner: Fantastic Mr. Fox features a delicious-looking Thanksgiving-ish feast in the middle, complete with kids making trouble and adults getting carried away with speeches, but the whole film is committed to a burnt-orange Autumn aesthetic. The same can be said for The Royal Tenenbaums though it contains some of the most severe stuff that Wes has ever shot. It’s also filled with a sense of depressive longing that really hits when the sun starts going down at like 4 p.m. Rushmore could also work here, but Grand Budapest Hotel might not.

• The Big Chill has a perfect soundtrack, and what the characters get up to (barring a bizarre final 30 minutes) might look a lot like your own Thanksgiving: conversations turned into arguments turned into reconciliation with a break for backyard football.

• Little Women (2019, Greta Gerwig) features several Christmas scenes and ice-skating and snowball fighting and a bunch of winter accoutrement but is shot like fall; there’s also something about repressed love and Autumn that somebody far more artistic than me can explain, but this movie has it in spades.

• Ordinary People gets heavy in its subject matter but remains tasteful enough in its depictions and discussions of suicide attempts and depression to be too severe, but man it just feels like late fall. This one does threaten to bum out the crowd though, so reading the room is crucial if this is what you’re gonna go for.

• Sports movies are a worthy shout here, regardless of their color palettes, since they’re mostly uplifting stories that are easy to watch, and you may even find yourself watching them in between actual sports on TV. Early-2000s Disney products that would be a perfect fit here are Miracle or Remember the Titans – banging soundtracks help.

Settling in – Long Runtimes. Some of these might create an overlapping Venn Diagram with Dad-core, but hey, the classics are classics for a reason.

• For years, AMC would air The Godfatherand The Godfather Part II at Thanksgiving, and that’s the first time I ever saw any of it; before I knew it, I’d been watching for two hours. A story of family first and foremost, I can think of no better way to spend 3 hours on a couch (6 and a half if you want the double header).

• One of my high school buddies told me that Titanic was a staple among him and his cousins every year, and it makes sense that one of the highest-grossing movies ever made remains a consistent crowd-pleaser despite its length.

• The Irishman is, compared to something like GoodFellas or Casino, a Thanksgiving-friendly patiently paced crime epic from Martin Scorsese that is full of such bittersweet regret that makes it a perfect Thanksgiving watch (especially if The Godfather is something you’d go for).

Franchise Marathons. If you find yourself with awful and freezing weather out there, spending your Black Friday crushing some of your favorite movie series with re-heated Thanksgiving dishes at the ready might just be in order – here are a few evergreen choices:

• Harry Potter: if you’ve got to narrow it down, my favorites are The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Half-Blood Prince

• The Lord of the Rings: they’re all excellent, even at 20.

• Star Wars: probably worth breaking out each of the trilogies separately, and those original three remain untouchable regardless of the compromised state of the franchise today.

• Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade – Temple of Doom is skippable, especially on Thanksgiving.

Full Movie List:

• Dad-core: The Longest Day; A Bridge Too Far; All the President’s Men; Jeremiah Johnson; The Hustler; The Sting; Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid; The Searchers; The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly; Dirty Harry; Ford V Ferrari; Moneyball; Argo; The Martian; First Man; Bridge of Spies

• Cozy Romance: Singin’ in the Rain; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; La La Land; Casablanca; The Apartment; It Happened One Night; The Philadelphia Story; His Girl Friday; Some Like it Hot; When Harry Met Sally; Sleepless in Seattle; You’ve Got Mail

• ~Aesthetic~: Fantastic Mr. Fox; The Royal Tenenbaums; Rushmore; The Big Chill; Little Women (2019); Ordinary People; Miracle; Remember the Titans

• Long Runtimes: The Godfather; The Godfather Part II; Titanic; The Irishman

• Franchise Picks: Harry Potter; The Lord of the Rings; Star Wars; Indiana Jones