There is an holiday wedged between Halloween and Christmas that doesnt get a ton of love. I'm talking about Thanksgiving, we enjoy it for spending time with family, food, football and lastly getting deals on Black Friday.
If you're a person who goes all in on holidays, which includes watching movies set around the holiday. You may notice there are slim pickings when it comes to Thanksgiving movies. There are the well known films like Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, Dutch, Home For the Holidays and Son-In-Law. Other than PTA I'm not sure any of these are considered Thanksgiving Classics (although I love Dutch). I'm going to touch on a few movies you should add to your Thanksgiving watch list.
5. FriendsGiving
This 2020 film is one I can almost guarantee no one has ever heard of. Besides being released during the pandemic, the film received almost no promotion. It stars Kat Dennings as Abby and Malin Akerman as Molly, two best friends attempting to move on from their respective relationships, decide to have Thanksgiving dinner together as just the two of them. Plans soon change when Molly decides to invite her fling to dinner, her mother played by Jane Seymour shows up unplanned and invites her ex-boyfriend, and some friends of their played Aisha Tyler and Deon Cole and their kids are invited over when their plans go south.
Dinner doesn't go haywire, but there are some bumps along the road during the day. The movie has good intentions, it's not great but it's not horrible either. It's kind of there, but in the Thanksgiving film genre maybe worth a view.
FriendsGiving is available on Starz.
4. Tower Heist
Tower Heist released in 2011 stars Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick and Eddie Murphy in what was considered his comeback role of the "gritty" Eddie Murphy. The film follows a group of hotel employees who after losing their retirement accounts in a ponzi scheme spearheaded by a resident. Decide to take their money back and steal from him.
They build their team and set up their heist, think Ocean's Eleven just not as sophisticated. With the big heist taking place Thanksgiving morning during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the crew work through some mishaps to use the parade as their cover. It actually is a pretty decent movie and Murphy does return to form here.
The film is currently available on Prime Video
3. Home For The Holidays
This movie gets some extra brownie points for being filmed and set in Baltimore. Directed by Jodie Foster the film stars Holly Hunter, Dylan McDermott, and Robert Downey Jr. Steve Guttenberg, Anne Bancroft, and Clare Danes fresh off her My So-Called Life days help round out the cast.
The film is about Holly's character Claudia who returns home for Thanksgiving to spend with her family, after an unfortunate sequence of events. The film is broken down into segments over the Holiday weekend, and honestly the plot is along the lines of a Seinfeld or even the movie Diner. It's really about nothing grand, other than sibling rivalry, holiday traditions, finding love again, and family will always be there and be family.
It's available on Paramount Plus and Pluto.
2. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
This 2009 film stars Kevin James as a blumbing but well-meaning mall cop, who once had aspirations of being a police officer. He's a single father trying to do his best raising his daughter, and meets a new love interest who works in the mall. On Black Friday the mall is taken hostage by a group of thieves led by a former coworker of Blart's. As luck would have it, there is only one man who can save the day.
Paul Blart is a mindless, enjoyable holiday comedy. It doesn't take itself too and has a good heart to the story about overcoming odds. If you need a good film to watch on Black Friday while you eat leftovers, this film is it.
It's currently available on Netflix.
The Ice Storm
.png)
1997's The Ice Storm based on the book of the same name, is one of those films were some wild shit goes down over a weekend. It follow's two Suburban families who are very intertwined with each other over Thanksgiving weekend. Directed by Ang Lee, Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, and Jamey Sheridan round out the adult cast. While younger cast members Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire, and Adam Hann-Byrd of Little Man Tate fame. A pretty serious cast list of heavy hitters bringing these characters to life.
They deal with adultery, mid-life crisis, young curiosities and puberty all over the weekend. To make things more difficult a ice storm is coming to town which keeps everyone on edge. The families in the film would never be the same after this Thanksgiving weekend. If you've never seen the movie, you will definitely feel their pain.
The film is currently only available to rent on various streaming platforms.
_poster.png)
