Happy Thanksgiving From CocktailsandMovies.com To You
Hi, everyone! Tim here! The originator of CocktailsandMovies.com, the lover of all things movies, the bartender and the CEO of this little dog and pony show…
There aren’t as many movies dedicated to turkey day as there are for Halloween or Christmas, and that’s a shame. Because it is littered with minefields that are ripe for writing about. But, the ones that ARE there for you to watch do it well, whether they are feel good or horror themed, road trips or right in the living room. So, please take a look at my list of some of my favorites, in descending order, for the Thanksgiving Holiday.
5. Dutch (1991)
I remembered this one because it tried to bank on Ed O’Neill’s time on “Married With Children,” but it got washed out by Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It’s about a Thanksgiving road trip with Ed O’Neill trying to transport his girlfriend’s snobby kid home for the holiday. It is like a slightly grimier cousin so it ends up mentioned whenever people reach for something else in that lane.
4. Into the Dark: Pilgrim (2019)
This is a feature length installment of Hulu and Blumhouse’s holiday anthology, which I didn’t know about until I was researching this article. It’s about a suburban mom who invites historically accurate Pilgrim reenact-ors to stay with the family for an “authentic” Thanksgiving, and they simply refuse to ever break character. This slowly turns into full cult home invasion. It’s very satirical, nasty, and very on the nose about entitled rich families getting exactly what they asked for.
3. Thanksgiving (2023)
Another horror film that fans of Eli Roth were promised for almost a decade. The fake trailer for this came out in Tarantino’s and Rodriguez’s GrindHouse movie. In a small New England town, Black Friday riot goes horribly wrong, and a year later a masked pilgrim killer named “John Carver” starts carving his way through everyone tied to that night. It is very much a love letter to 80s slashers, just with modern pacing and extremely gleeful holiday themed kills.
2. Home for the Holidays (1995)
One of my favorite, with Robert Downey, Jr. and an amazing cast top to bottom about a dysfunctional family, small stakes that feel enormous, and Holly Hunter just trying to survive one more Thanksgiving. It is basically the archetypal “this is what it really feels like to go home” holiday movie. It shows up on nearly every curated Thanksgiving list.
1. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
The king. El jefe. THE ONE. The entire plot is “get home in time for Thanksgiving,” and it is still the template for chaotic holiday travel stories. Funny, mean, then secretly devastating in that John Hughes way with Steve Martin and John Candy creating a hate/love relationship that will have you crying in the end. There is a reason why it shows up on pretty much every Thanksgiving list for good reason.
