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OKAY, LET'S UNPACK just what the heck makes a Thanksgiving movie a "Thanksgiving movie" besides, just like, something set in November around a gluttonous dinner table. Sure, you’ve got your traditional gather-around-the-stuffing affairs like the classic A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. But there’s gotta be something a little bit more to this genre than turkey aesthetics. There has to be more than just theatrics.
Ultimately, Thanksgiving is about colonial hegemony and fictional parley feasts used to sugarcoat genocidal invasion and ... woah, sorry about that; you caught us reading from the Book of Uncomfortable Truths. While the historicity of the holiday—particularly that involving Pilgrims and Native Americans—is hogwash, the spirit of the celebration—gratitude found at the beginning of the harvest season, when food isn’t just a superfluous decoration but a means of winter survival—can be found in all cultures.
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Which is why a “Thanksgiving movie” doesn’t have to be an American movie. (And why the most American Thanksgiving movie is probably The New World, if only for showing what those first harvest seasons were really like: violence, starvation, lots of sinning.)
That’s not to say we won’t throw on some fun movies to watching during Thanksgiving; we’re not all about historicity and jagged truth pills. We want to have fun as well. And, if you can’t decide what to watch, there’s always football. What’s the name of the team the Cowboys usually play, now?
Here are the best Thanksgiving movies to watch this season.
Thanksgiving (2023)
Halloween has Halloween. Christmas has Black Christmas. Now, horror director Eli Roth has given Thanksgiving its very own terrifying, fun, slasher film: Thanksgiving. Based on his own fake trailer of the same name (from the theatrical version of 2006's Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature Grindhouse), this movie is just about everything horror fans could want: a whodunit mystery, very well made, solid acting (from Patrick Dempsey and Big Shot star Nell Verlaque), and some absolutely brutal violence. Do not watch if you have a weak stomach!
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Spider-Man (2002)
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man may have reinvented the superhero movie genre as we know it, but it's also a covert Thanksgiving movie where one of the movie's most vital scenes take place when Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) starts to carve a turkey. A timeless film for many reasons!
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National Treasure (2004)
This historical adventure film (ok, maybe historical is a stretch) just feels like a Thanksgiving movie. Does it not? And Nic Cage is in top form.
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The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
In the beautifully-animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson made a film that's fantastic viewing (ba dum tsss) for all ages—with a orange-brown aesthetic that feels just right for Thanksgiving. The voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, and more make this a ton of fun.
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Stuck in Love (2013)
This family-focused dramedy about a family of writers stagnant in various stages of life is set around a couple particularly dramatic Thanksgiving dinners. With a cast led by Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connolly, and more (and a very brief glimpse of a young Glen Powell!), you're certain to be entertained around Thanksgiving time with this one.
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Funny People (2009)
Judd Apatow's follow-up to Knocked Up was Funny People, a movie about an aging comedy superstar (Adam Sandler) who, when facing potentially bad medical news, decides to take on a young new writer (Seth Rogen) to jump start his career and get some joy back into his life. In one particularly notable scene, the older comedian spends Thanksgiving with his younger employees friends—and it's a funny, unnerving, and super memorable moment.
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The Big Chill (1983)
While The Big Chill doesn't explicitly take place during Thanksgiving, it does feel like Thanksgiving, given that it's all about loved ones gathering and hashing out some long-simmering arguments (and features a memorable Thanksgiving flashback as well). The movie has a very simple premise: a group of former college friends come back together after 15 years following the suicide of their friend. Fun fact? The unseen friend marked one of the very first roles for Kevin Costner, who had his scenes cut. The movie's actual cast is great nonetheless, including Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, and more.
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She's Gotta Have It (1986)
She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's very first movie, and, despite his impressive resume through the next 30+ years, still one of his best. The movie follows a woman named Nola Darling who's choosing between her three gentleman suitors, and in one of the most memorable scenes in the film, all four have Thanksgiving dinner together.
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American Gangster (2007)
Ridley Scott and Denzel Washington made fireworks together in 2024 with Gladiator II, but their first time working together came in 2007 with the crime epic American Gangster. Telling the saga of Frank Lucas, Scott and Washington both do some of their great work to bring this portrait of a violent but altruistic man to life. The movie spans a long period of time, but one particularly memorable (and shocking) moment comes during the Thanksgiving holiday.
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Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Everyone knows the silly premise of Robin Williams' star vehicle Mrs. Doubtfire—where a man creates a new persona as a British nanny to spend more time with his kids after a divorce—but it's also a great Thanksgiving movie. What's better for pre- or post- Turkey viewing than a movie about going to absurd lengths for family?
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Prisoners (2013)
This Denis Villeneuve movie starts with a pair of families coming together for Thanksgiving—but things take a stark turn from there when a daughter from each family goes missing after dinner. This is one of the most interesting and gripping mystery thrillers in recent memory, with a cast—Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Paul Dano—that all brings their A-games.
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Little Women (2019)
Little Women is a timeless Thanksgiving text (both the actual novel and the many adaptations), but we lean with the most recent version, directed by Barbie's Greta Gerwig, because it's just so warm and cozy. With a great cast led by Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh, this could be an annual Thanksgiving staple.
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Four Brothers (2005)
This family-focused film follows four adapted brothers (Mark Wahlberg, Andre 3000, Garrett Hedlund, and Tyrese Gibson) as they return home for their mother's funeral—only to discover that she's been murdered. The revenge tour then begins. The late great director John Singleton was behind this one.
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The Humans (2021)
This existential horror (adapted from a play of the same name) finds Richard Jenkins and Steven Yeun as members of a family all coming together for a Thanksgiving in Manhattan. If you want some dread and discomfort for Thanksgiving dinner, this is the movie for you.
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For Your Consideration (2006)
For Your Consideration is one of the very funny Christopher Guest films (a group that also includes This Is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, and Best in Show, among others) that features the famed actor/comedian and his many usual collaborators, including Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, and more. O'Hara, here, plays an actress who gets swept up in the annual mania of movie awards season—and Thanksgiving winds up playing a major part in her potentially Award-winning role.
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Dan in Real Life (2007)
As just about everyone remembers on Thanksgiving... families can be tough. Perhaps to put it even more bluntly, families can be annoying—and messy. That's on perfect display in Dan in Real Life, where Steve Carell plays a widower who returns to his family home for Thanksgiving to find that he's got a little romantic thing going with a woman (Juliette Binoche) who just happens to be his brother's (Dane Cook) girlfriend. Whoops!
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A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
Because, well, no one comforts us during the holidays quite like Peanuts, and this short special is almost as magical as the Christmas one. While it’s been a broadcast mainstay in past years, it’ll be available free streaming on Apple TV+ for a period.
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The New World (2005)
Controversial opinion: The New World is the best Thanksgiving movie. The origins of Thanksgiving aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy, and Terrence Malick’s (Days of Heaven, Tree of Life) underappreciated 2005 masterpiece wrestles with the costs of the settling of Jamestown, Virginia, on all sides (while still being gorgeous to look at, this being Malick). Even the deeply romantic moments between John Smith and Pocahantas are rooted in a real sense of place, and backgrounded by historical peril. Just let everyone know this isn’t exactly a feel-good Turkey Day experience.
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The Ice Storm (1997)
True to its title, The Ice Storm couldn’t really be icier. One of Ang Lee’s best movies, it transports us to the mind of young, moody Elijah Wood as Paul Hood and then from there to the tragic and sometimes kinky ‘70s messiness of two suburban families set over a Thanksgiving weekend. There’s a key party and Sigourney Weaver, so the film kind of sells itself.
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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)
John Hughes proved he had chops outside the teen comedy genre, and then some. John Candy and Steve Martin are pitch-perfect awkward buds traveling to get the latter back to his family for Thanksgiving. Hughes laces their natural comedic gifts with an underlying desperation that everyone can recognize.
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Knives Out (2019)
While not set explicitly during Thanksgiving (it’s fall—close enough), Rian Johnson’s Knives Out was made for Thanksgiving viewing. The film hit theaters in November and remains a film designed for the whole family. Like live action "Clue," it’s also a film the family can play along with, guessing every twist and turn as you sit around in your Chris Evans inspired wool sweater.
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Home for the Holidays (1995)
Holly Hunter is her usual irresistibly charming self in the Jodie Foster-directed Home for the Holidays, as a put-upon and fired mom who’s ditched for Thanksgiving by her own daughter and must travel to deal with the affronts of her Chicago family instead. There’s nothing totally surprising here, but the cast is reason enough to stick around. No one lands jokes like Hunter, Robert Downey Jr. (!), Anne Bancroft, and Charles Durning. (Oh, there’s also Claire Danes as said daughter who informs her mom she will be promptly sleeping with her boyfriend, though not in a car.)
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The Oath (2018)
Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish are two very, very funny comedians who unsurprisingly deliver on their gifts in this darker take on Thanksgiving, in which the two actors as a couple must legally swear their allegiance to the United States government in a draconian near-future.
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Krisha (2015)
This small movie is more fierce than most Thanksgiving movies, shooting real family members in order to confront the pain that afflicts them over the course of the holiday. The sometimes abrasive techniques might be a bit too much for some, but there’s artistry here.
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Midsommar (2019)
Here us out: Ari Aster’s daylight pagan horror fest Midsommar is actually a great Thanksgiving film. While the festival takes place in Scandinavia and during summer, the outcomes are pretty much the same as North America’s Autumnal history: two cultures meet, bread is broken, and then mass violence ensues. Watch it during friendsgiving when there are no kids around.
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Grumpy Old Men (1993)
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau more or less invented the “aren’t those old guys cute?” comedy genre with Grumpy Old Men. The two are delightfully ornery frenemies vying for the courtship of a woman with, among other things, a Thanksgiving dinner. And yes, it’s cute.
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Scent of a Woman (1992)
Al Pacino’s “hoo-ah” meme was born with his Academy Award-winning performance in Scent of a Woman, which is reason enough to watch. But it’s also a tender portrayal of a bond between a prep school student and Pacino’s blind yet suave alcoholic bent on death. So you know, normal family stuff.
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Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)
Get ready for Black Friday early with this Kevin James-starring comedy, in which a mall cop feebly faces the most disastrous consequences of the big shopping day. It came and went in theaters, but it’s become a rightful cult hit.
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What’s Cooking? (2000)
This underseen 2000 comedy-drama embraces the everyone-under-the-tent spirit of Thanksgiving that is the holiday’s true source of joy. Starring Kyra Sedgwick, Dennis Haysbert, Julianna Margulies, Joan Chen, and Alfre Woodard among others, it weaves its way through the stories of four ethnically diverse families who have their own traditions, the universal one being bickering complemented by love.
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Sweet November (2001)
Sweet November stars the extremely hot (as if it needed to be said) Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, who on an apparent lark live together for the whole month of November. It hits the familiar steps of a glossy early-2000s rom-com, but Reeves and Theron convince us it’s something precious, probably because they’re lovely and talented and should be in everything.
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Avalon (1990)
Thanksgiving has its own meaning for immigrants in the United States that can be hard to define, but Barry Levinson’s (Rain Man) Avalon tracks rifts over generations of immigrants in a touching way. It also includes the simple yet perfect Thanksgiving line “You cut the turkey without me?”
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Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
If you can get past Woody Allen’s current ugly reputation, this flick is of his better dives into his movies’ usual neuroses, following the various funny-repellant dysfunctions of an extended family over two years and bookended by Thanksgiving dinners.
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You’ve Got Mail (1998)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had a special chemistry on the screen that’s impossible to replicate. In the vaguely Thanksgiving-related You’ve Got Mail, writer-director Nora Ephron drinks them in while giving them the pitter-patter wit that made her a legend in her own right.
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Pieces of April (2003)
It’s time for Katie Holmes to get due for her late ‘90s and early-2000s movie acting work, which is admittedly very limited. The winners are Go and this low-budget effort about a tattooed New York City girl (Holmes) whose family is visiting her rickety apartment for Thanksgiving in spite of her wayward attitude while mom (a wonderful Patricia Clarkson) deals with a cancer diagnosis. It stumbles on some indie-movie cliches of the era, it’s also funny and heartfelt, and Holmes has weirdly never been more convincing.
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Thankskilling (2007)
It’s hard to call Thankskilling a good film, but it’s an amusing group watch if you’re (safely) celebrating Thanksgiving with friends or family who are into chatting over scary movies that aren’t remotely scary but do elicit chuckles. This one stars a talking murderous bird. Crack open the Wild Turkey and take in all its low-rent glory.
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Chicken Run (2000)
Poultry slaughter is peak Thanksgiving. And while every other family is watching sapien-centric entertainment, change it up: revisit the classic 2000 stop-motion story about a group of farm chickens avoiding incineration into meat pies.
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The House of Yes (1997)
This ink-black comedy about awkward Thanksgiving chatter is distinctive for two reasons: sharp dialogue, and the genuinely otherworldly bizarreness that only Parker Posey can bring to a role.
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The Last Waltz (1978)
Directed by Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz capturing an epic performance by the Band (with guests you may know like, uh, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Mavis Staples—it keeps going) is arguably the greatest concert documentary ever. It also captures a fascinatingly unique moment in time, for music and a wider culture that in 1976 was already slipping away. Oh, and it was filmed on Thanksgiving Day.
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Son-in-Law (1993)
Paul Shore gets crap for his (now dated) shtick but he had longevity in the ‘90s for a reason: It worked. The farm girl-meets-California hippie setup of Son in Law, sure, is contrived, but it also has the pleasantly zonked-out humor of Shore and Carla Gugino.
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Addams Family Values (1993)
No one would really call Addams Family Values a Thanksgiving movie, but it does have a pivotal and hilarious Thanksgiving scene (little Christina Ricci’s Wednesday as Pocahontas) and it’s a purely fun ‘90s throwback.
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Free Birds (2013)
In case you need something for the kids, Owen Wilson stars in this animated film about turkeys who have to team up to travel back in time. It's the perfect wacky film to watch after eating all that turkey makes you sleepy.
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One True Thing (1998)
Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger star in One True Thing. This Thanksgiving drama follows a young woman who puts her life on hold to take care of her mother, who is dying from cancer.
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Turkey Hollow (2015)
The Jim Henson Company partnered with Lifetime to create a new Thanksgiving film about two children who embark on a search for a local legend in the town of Turkey Hollow.
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Lez Bomb (2018)
Fans of Happiest Season will enjoy Lez Bomb, a movie with a similar plot, but set during Thanksgiving. When a closeted lesbian invites her girlfriend over for Thanksgiving, she hopes to come out to her family. Instead, her family thinks her male roommate is her boyfriend, and chaos ensues.
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Holidate (2020)
Holidate features both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we're counting it as a Thanksgiving movie. Emma Roberts stars as a young woman who hates the holidays because her family always bothers her about being single. But of course, as the holidays approach, she meets a man who could be a potential match.
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Garfield's Thanksgiving (1989)
For anyone who wants a bit of nostalgia, 1989's television special Garfield's Thanksgiving features the popular orange cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna in a fun holiday special.
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The Daytrippers (1996)
Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, and Parker Posey star in this comedy-drama about a woman who discovers her husband may be having an affair and decides to confront him...but brings her family with her.
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