The 50+ Best Movies to Watch This Thanksgiving
There’s no perfect recipe for a good Thanksgiving movie. (Pun absolutely intended.) You need healthy amounts of football, family, and fall foliage, but not necessarily all three. Especially because there are scant few Thanksgiving movies in the cinematic universeâunless we’re talking about the Thanksgiving horror movie, 2023’s Thanksgiving, which is absolutely on this list. But the holiday is usually only represented in a five-minute scene here and there, especially when someone wants to heartily give thanks (Eat, Pray, Love) or bicker among one another (Spider-Man).
Really, all you should look for is a movie thatâafter you’ve had a cocktail or fourâwill provide a sweet soundtrack for your nap. The smooth jazz of Troy Aikman’s voice will also do the trick, but we’re recommending films today.
So here you go, folks. These are 50-plus great options for your Thanksgiving watch list. Happy holidays.
Remember the TitansAmazon Disney+
Listen, Remember the Titans isn’t technically a Thanksgiving movie. But it features plenty of those Thanksgiving elements we mentioned above: football, fall foliage, and large amounts of people gathering for meals. Oh, and Denzel Washington is currently on Esquire’s cover. Do us a favor and give it a rewatch.
The Blind SideAmazon
The 2009 film belongs on your Thanksgiving weekend watch list for all the same reasons as Remember the Titans, only The Blind Side actually does feature a good ol’ Thanksgiving meal.
Eat, Pray, LoveParamount+
Julia Roberts gives a hell of a Thanksgiving-dinner speechâmaybe even the bestâin Eat, Pray, Love. (Side note: How is this movie nearly 15 years old?!)
Spider-ManDisney+I’ll forgive you if you don’t want to watch the whole thing. Just watch the Thanksgiving scene from the Parker-family dinner and you can go on your merry way.
Bean: The Ultimate Disaster MovieAmazon
Yes, Mr. Bean once enjoyed a very Mr. Bean-ified Thanksgiving. Just don’t watch the turkey scene before dinner. It’ll likely ruin your appetiteâand we don’t want that for you.
Thanksgiving A horror movie starring Addison Rae and Patrick Dempsey? Consider it an early holiday gift. This thriller follows a masked killer who terrorizes a town … right in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, itâs as scary as it sounds.
Soul Food Apple TV+
Is your family prone to fighting at the table? Sounds like it’s time to watch Soul Food. This classic follows the Simmons family, a tight-knit group whose Sunday-night-dinner tradition is upended when their matriarch, Big Mama, goes into a diabetic coma. Without her presence, the Simmonses struggle to uphold the values Big Mama taught them. In order to save their family, they learn to lean on one another for support.
HolidateNetflix
If you showed up to Thanksgiving alone, then this movie is for you. Holidate follows two singles who agree to be each other’s date for a year’s worth of family holidays. It’s all fun and games until, of course, they actually fall for each other.
Black Friday Starz
What is Thanksgiving if not a primer for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year? Before heading to the mall, watch this sci-fi adventure film for a comedic take on the pseudo holiday. Black Friday follows a group of toy-store employees who are preparing for shoppers when an alien crashes into Earth.
The Big SickAmazon AppleTV+
The Big Sick nails its depiction of the Awkward Moment when you meet the parents of your significant other. In the film, Kumail Nanjiani tells the true story of how he met his wife, Emily Gordon. If you want to laugh about being in an incredibly tense situation with your partner’s parents, pop on this rom-com.
Knives OutNetflix
Knives Out just screams cozy with all of its sweaters, wooden decorations, and fallen leaves. Rian Johnson’s mystery flick, which has a sequel, is a must-watch if you’re in a family that loves solving puzzles or escape rooms (or, you know, Daniel Craig).
Eat Drink Man WomanAmazon AppleTV+
Nothing brings family together like a good meal. In Eat Drink Man Woman, Ang Lee touches on this basic fact with an intimate story of three daughters and their aging father.
Guess Who’s Coming to DinnerAmazon AppleTV+
If you’ve ever felt nervous bringing a date or a partner home to meet your parents, you’ll be able to relate to this film. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a classic tale of trying to get your family on board with the person you’re in love with.
Big NightAmazon AppleTV+
Think your family is stressful? Imagine running an authentic Italian restaurant with your brother! Now imagine that brother is Tony Shalhoub or Stanley Tucciâand your stress will just melt away like Parmesan on a hot plate of pasta.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding HBO Max
It’s like everyone’s Thanksgiving meal but in the form of a two-hour film.
Friendsgiving Amazon
Two friends think they’re about to have a quiet Thanksgiving dinner. What they don’t expect is to have friends, lovers, and relatives all crash their meal, all at the same time. But isn’t that what the holiday is all about, anyway?
Autumn in New York Amazon
Because the holiday season is the perfect time for rom-coms, here’s one for you. When a Casanova-type New York chef meets a young woman one fall day in Manhattan, he never expects to fall in love with her … or himself in the process.
AnnieAmazon
Itâs a musical based on the desire to have the perfect family! While we know that’s definitely not the caseâyou’re sitting with yours right nowâit’s still a charming watch.
The OathAmazon
Based on the conversations you might be having with some relatives this year, this plot might seem almost too on the nose. Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish star as a couple who must grapple with the “oath”âa new government proposition asking citizens to sign a pledge of allegiance to the U.S. president before Black Friday.
Chicken RunAmazon AppleTV+
Okay, so, technically this would be more faithful to the Thanksgiving canon if it were Turkey Run. But this feature-film debut from the iconic Aardman animation studio is a Thanksgiving hit for obvious reasons. The stop-motion film, centered on a group of chickens determined to escape execution before being turned into chicken pies, is as hilarious as it is visually spectacular.
The Big ChillAmazon AppleTV+
Though a darker turn on the typical image of a reunion, The Big Chill holds a balance of uplifting friendship and gravity that is perfect for the holiday. The film follows a group of old college pals as they reunite after losing one of their close friends to suicide.
She’s Gotta Have ItNetflix
Spike Lee’s iconic She’s Gotta Have It, following one woman’s love square with her three competing lovers, isn’t typically included in the wholesome holiday canon. But few films have featured a more memorable Thanksgiving dinner than that of Nola Darling, in which she invites over all three men to celebrate the holiday as she sits at the head of the table.
A Family Thanksgiving Amazon AppleTV+
It isn’t the holiday season until you’ve watched at least one made-for-TV movie. This one is about an ambitious lawyer named Claudia who ends up in an alternate world where she is a soccer mom. This is all thanks to her sort-of guardian angel Faye Dunaway. An entire gender-studies thesis could be written about this movie based on the plot alone, but the conflict all starts when Claudia is pressured by her sister to bake a pie for Thanksgiving. So you could say it’s a movie about pie (enter Betty Friedan once again).
You’ve Got MailAmazon AppleTV+ HBO Max
This is one of those movies that is not about Thanksgiving but is set in fall, and there is a Thanksgiving scene. In this 1998 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and written and directed by Nora and Delia Ephron, two Upper West Side New Yorkers meet in an online chat room and fall in love over a series of months. At one point, Tom Hanks goes into Zabar’s on Thanksgiving, which is maybe the most New York thing one can do.
August: Osage CountyAppleTV+ NetflixThis one is not at all set on Thanksgiving, but it is about a family imploding, so it seems fitting. A play written by Tracy Letts and adapted into a film in 2014, this movie centers on a family mourning the loss of the patriarch while simultaneously battling the ailing, depressed, abusive matriarch. Meryl Streep also gets into a physical fight with Julia Roberts; there’s really nothing left to say.
Sweet NovemberAmazon AppleTV+
Charlize Theron. Keanu Reeves. A very 2001 film. In it, Theron’s character, Sara, meets Nelson (Reeves) at the DMV, where a lasting relationships begin. Sara asks Nelson to spend the month of November with her and promises that she will change his life for the better. So these two spend the month together, but it turns out there’s more to the story than Nelson knows.
National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family ReunionYouTube
Christmas Vacation is in a category of its own, but the entire National Lampoon franchise is usually a crowd-pleaser at family holidays. This one features Malcolm in the Middleâera Bryan Cranston as the eccentric hippie and long-lost cousin of suburban man Mitch Snider. Awkward family antics ensue.
For Your ConsiderationAmazon AppleTV+ HBO Max Hulu
For the Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy fans, this 2006 mockumentary is about three actors played by Guest favorites Catherine OâHara, Parker Posey, and Harry Shearer, who are making a film called Home for Purim, which is supposedly garnering lots of Oscar buzz. Things come to a bit of a halt when the studio intervenes and renames the film Home for Thanksgiving, because the first title is apparently âtoo Jewish.â Sure.
What’s Cooking?Amazon
This movie jumps around to four different Thanksgiving meals, all thrown by families from diverse backgrounds who have a few things in common: stress, food, and stressing over food.
The Last WaltzAppleTV+
For a little switch-up, this one is a documentary. Directed by Martin Scorsese, this film follows the Thanksgiving farewell show of the Band. Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton all appear.
Paul Blart: Mall CopAmazon AppleTV+
Black Friday has become as much of a holiday as Thanksgiving, so it makes sense that we have a movie devoted completely to that day. Paul Blart (Kevin James) gets caught up in a heist that happens under his own noseâand has to save the day in West Orange, New Jersey. To really go meta with your Thanksgiving viewing, listen to the annual Til Death Do Us Blart podcast.
Home for the Holidays Amazon AppleTV+ Paramount+
Jodie Foster’s finest directorial effort remains this 1995 comedy about the Thanksgiving get-together of Holly Hunter’s thoroughly dysfunctional clan, which includes her mother (Anne Bancroft) and father (Charles Durning), her brother (Robert Downey Jr.), and his friend (Dylan McDermott). What ensues is the gold standard for family-gathering holiday films, full of absurdity, pathos, and ultimately a rousing sense of the ups and downs of dealing with relatives.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles Amazon AppleTV+ Hulu Paramount+
Steve Martin’s marketing executive just wants to get home to New York for Thanksgiving in John Hughes’s 1987 comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but fate constantly stymies those plansâwell, fate and John Candy’s shower-ring salesman, a chipper and clumsy clown who becomes his unlikely traveling partner during this rollicking three-day odyssey. The pillow scene remains an all-time-classic gag.
A Charlie Brown ThanksgivingAppleTV+Maybe it’s not as iconic as A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but this Peanuts holiday special is a good holdover between Halloween and Christmas. This Emmy-winning classic sees Peppermint Patty infiltrating Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving holiday, which he naturally scrambles to put together with his trademark anxiety. (Where the hell are these kids’ parents, btw?)
The Ice Storm Amazon AppleTV+
Thanksgiving is anything but jovial in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, which is set around the holiday in 1973 Connecticut, where two well-off families struggle with all manner of the-times-they-are-a’-changin’ upheaval. Adultery and alcohol inevitably play a big factor in their problems, which are dramatized by director Leeâand handled by his cast, including Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and Elijah Woodâwith chilling incisiveness.
Pieces of AprilAmazon AppleTV+ Showtime Hulu
In her finest performance, Katie Holmes plays the titular April, who bravely invites her dysfunctional family from suburban Pennsylvania to her tiny apartment on the Lower East Side. Disaster strikes early when her stove breaks and she is forced to find a working oven in her building. Meanwhile, her cancer-stricken mother (Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson) slowly dreads the trek into the city to see her somewhat estranged daughter.
The House of YesAmazon
On Thanksgiving 1983, Marty brings his fiancĂ©e Lesly home to meet his familyâhis dim-witted and horny brother, Anthony; his cold and nosey mother, Mrs. Pascal; and his mentally unhinged and Kennedy-obsessed sister, Jackie-O. All hell breaks loose, naturally, as kitchen knives are hidden, sexual boundaries are tested, and Parker Posey delivers one of the most hilariously intense performances of her career.
Funny PeopleAmazon AppleTV+ Hulu
Judd Apatow’s dramatic comedy stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a wealthy movie star who seeks to get back to his stand-up-comedy roots after being diagnosed with leukemia. He meets a young aspiring comic (Seth Rogen) in search of a mentor, and the two tour the country as George performs his new material and reconnects with his ex-fiancĂ©e. It’s a film about the comedy world and how friendships evolve into familial relationships, highlighted by a Thanksgiving toast George delivers in honor of his chosen family.
TadpoleAmazon Paramount+
Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is wise beyond his years, and he’s certainly attractive to all of his fellow 15-year-olds at his boarding school. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in girls his age, instead setting his sights on his stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver), who is oblivious to his affections for her. Over Thanksgiving break, however, Oscar comes up with a scheme: He plans to seduce Eve’s best friend in order to make his stepmother jealous.
Free BirdsAmazon Netflix AppleTV+
Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, and George Takei lend their voices to this animated comedy. Reggie is a turkey who was lucky enough to be pardoned on Thanksgiving by the president of the United States. Jake, on the other hand, is a wild turkey with a political agenda: He kidnaps Jake in an effort to promote the Turkey Freedom Front, a guerrilla group set to end Thanksgiving for good. Together they maneuver a time machine back to the very first Thanksgiving to rid turkeys from the menu for good.
Krisha
Amazon Showtime
Trey Edward Shults made his directorial debut with this indie drama, which stars members of his real-life familyâincluding his aunt Krisha Fairchild in the titular role. Krisha arrives at her sister’s house for a Thanksgiving celebration after years of estrangement from her family. Overwhelmed by her return to this seemingly normal life, Krisha starts drinking and popping pills in secretâand all hell breaks loose as emotions fly and family secrets are exposed.
Son in LawAmazon AppleTV+
Believe it or not, Pauly Shore was once a cinematic staple. As the essential ’90s slack dimwit, the actor and comedian was every parent’s worst nightmareânever more so than in the fish-out-of-water comedy that features Shore as a dude named Crawl, the unlikely boyfriend to small-town-girl Becca (Carla Gugino). Becca brings Crawl back home for Thanksgiving, much to the shock and horror of her conservative farmer father. Tensions only rise when Crawl expresses his intent to propose to Becca over the holiday weekend.
Addams Family ValuesAmazon AppleTV+
This sequel to the big-screen adaptation of the classic TV sitcom finds the spooky-ooky Addams family once again up to their weird, gothic ways. But their family is thrown into turmoil when a new nanny, Debbie (a pitch-perfect Joan Cusack), has her sights on Uncle Festerâand plans on marrying him for his riches before killing him off. Wednesday and Pugsley know something’s up, but Debbie convinces Gomez and Morticia to send them to summer campâwhere they are forced to participate in a completely bonkers musical rendition of the first Thanksgiving.
The DaytrippersHBO Max
Greg Mottola’s low-budget indie comedy stars Hope Davis as Eliza, a New York woman who’s happily married to Louis (Stanely Tucci)âor so she thinks. While at her parents’ home for Thanksgiving, Eliza finds a lover letter from Louis to an unknown woman. When she confides in her family, the whole lot stuff themselves into the family station wagon and make their way from Long Island into Manhattan in search of answers.
Alice’s RestaurantAmazon
Folk rocker Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody) plays himself in this offbeat comedy film inspired by his song of the same name. Guthrie, a long-haired draft dodger visiting some friends in an uptight Massachusetts town for Thanksgiving, thinks he’s doing a his hosts a favor by filling his Volkswagen minibus with their garbage and taking it to the dump. A mix-up ensues, Guthrie is busted for littering, and he seeks to prove himself unfit for combat when the draft comes calling.
Nobody’s Fool Amazon AppleTV+ Hulu
Nobody’s Fool is one of the last great headlining vehicles for Paul Newman, who stars here as an upstate New York construction-worker hustler in constant conflict with a contractor (Bruce Willis) whose wife (Melanie Griffith) he fancies. His routine is upended by the arrival of his estranged son (Dylan Walsh) around Thanksgiving, leading to an amusing (and disarming) holiday-set character study about loneliness, reconciliation, and the unexpected ways people achieve contentment.
Dutch Amazon
Ed O’Neill’s great unsung big-screen performance is in this 1991 comedy, which (like Planes, Trains and Automobiles) involves a road trip home for Thanksgiving by two combative men. In this case, they’re O’Neill’s boorish slob and Ethan Embry’s snobby prep-school kidâthe son of O’Neill’s girlfriend (JoBeth Williams)âwho, through a series of misadventures, forge a lasting friendship.
Hannah and Her Sisters
Amazon AppleTV+ Hulu
Opening and closing with scenes of its characters at Thanksgiving dinner, Woody Allen’s 1986 comedic dramaâwhich won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor and Actress statuettes for Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest, respectivelyâtells a raft of interconnected stories, all in some way related to Mia Farrow’s Hannah and her two siblings. Equal parts hilarious and touching, it remains one of the writer-director’s crowning achievements.
Scent of a Woman Amazon AppleTV+
Over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend, Chris O’Donnell’s prep-school student comes of age while caring for a blind retired Army lieutenant (Al Pacino) in Martin Brest’s acclaimed Scent of a Woman, which finally earned Pacino his first-ever Academy Award (for Best Actor). Amid all of its star’s blustery hoo-ahing, it’s a surprisingly tender tale of an unlikely friendship between two strangers.
Grumpy Old Men Amazon AppleTV+
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are two bitter lifelong rivals who engage in ludicrous warfare over the affections of the new resident (Ann-Margret) of their Wabasha, Minnesota, neighborhood. That conflict includes an amusing Thanksgiving dinner, in which the two do their best to act like feuding, immature children.
The New World
Amazon AppleTV+
No, it doesn’t feature a storybook “pilgrims and Native Americans” feast. Nonetheless, Terrence Malick’s 2005 dramaâabout the founding of Virginia’s Jamestown settlement and the mythical romance that blossoms between British Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Native American Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher)âis the lyrical, haunting story of America’s birth and thus the ideal masterpiece to experience on Thanksgiving.
