Thanksgiving is notorious for many things; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, large family meals, and noisy football games. However, this year is a bit different. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many families are not able to safely come together this holiday season.
Be prepared to queue up this movie line-up, here are a few flicks that are on the Thanksgiving marquee this year. These recommendations will make it feel like a proper Thanksgiving despite the current drabbiness of the year.
Inarguably, food is a key component to the holiday cheer. As many are adjusting to cooking smaller meals for the season, the food aspect of this year’s Thanksgiving is a bit unconventional. Whether going for a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner or altering some family favorites or even just eating a bag of dinner rolls in bed, one thing is consistent: it has to be comfort food.
Chef (2014) is the perfect feel-good movie about delicious, comforting foods. It is directed by and starring Iron Man’s Jon Favreau, with roles taken by Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., and Sofia Vergara. While making the movie, Favreau was consulted by the acclaimed chef Roy Choi who oversaw the movie’s menu, meaning that the food (professionally) looks to die for.
The movie is decked with delicious, warm sandwiches— the best comfort food: yummy bread that can easily be stuffed with a variety of flavors. And although the movie shifts to a keen focus on pork Cubanos, towards the beginning, Favreau’s character makes a delicate grilled cheese for his preteen son, it is aggressively buttered and stuffed with three different kinds of cheese.
Perhaps this is a less-desirable part of Thanksgiving, but what holiday is complete without a little family feud? Two movies to press play on that seamlessly convey this complex and slightly-dysfunctional family dynamic are Wish I Were Here and Ricki and the Flash.
Available for streaming on Netflix, Wish I Was Here is a comedy-drama released in 2014 directed and written by Scrubs’ Zach Braff. Although it adopts a young and carefree sense of humor, it is coupled with a heartfelt storyline about distant family members, parenthood, and self-discovery. Besides Braff, the movie also stars Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Mandy Patinkin, and Fresh Prince of Belair’s James Avery.
With Wish I Were Here being more lo-fi and realistic, Ricki and the Flash changes the tone when it comes to family dynamics. In this Diablo Cody directed dramedy, Meryl Streep plays small-town rockstar Ricki Flash who had previously left her husband and children to pursue her rock-n-roll dreams. She reenters their life in their adulthood and is met with hostility, especially from her daughter Julie, played by Streep’s real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer. Ricki and the Flash also stars Marvel’s Sebastian Stan as Josh, Ricki Flash’s newly-engaged son. This movie navigates their attempt at reconciliation with humor and simplicity, making it a lively watch.
Thanksgiving and football are one and the same, the two have been conjoined since the 1800s. Interestingly enough, according to sources, the first Thanksgiving football game was in 1876 when teams from Yale and Princeton played against each other, since then Thanksgiving has become a traditional sports day recognized by the Intercollegiate Football Association. Whether one is interested in sports or not, the lingering background noise of a football game is frequent in Thanksgiving celebrations. To account for this and bring on some fun nostalgia, watch The Game Plan which is conveniently streaming on Disney+.
Starring muscleman Dwanye “The Rock” Johnson, comes this 2007 family movie about a professional quarterback who, at a high-point in his career, discovers he has an 8-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. The movie features many real-life sportscasters in cameos, including “the voice of basketball” Marv Albert and NFL quarterback turned sports analyst, Norman “Boomer” Esiason. There are also journalists from Sportscaster and ESPN providing fictional coverage throughout the movie.
Streaming old Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades is always a Thanksgiving option, but if that doesn’t pique interest, throw it back to 1986 to watch the teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This movie follows three high school seniors who decide to skip school and embark on a day of adventures in downtown Chicago. Although not featuring a Thanksgiving parade, the movie has a legendary Von Steuben Day parade sequence, an annual German-American celebration.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was directed by John Hughes, a notorious filmmaker who is behind many American classics including The Breakfast Club and the Home Alone trilogy. The movie stars Matthew Broderick, Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey, and Alan Ruck who can currently be seen in the new Blumhouse movie Freaky.
Pie is a pretty hefty component of Thanksgiving. What better way to pay homage than by tuning into the 2007 drama movie Waitress. Before being known as the Tony-nominated musical by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, Waitress was a Fox Searchlight Pictures production starring Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion. The movie follows pie-maker and waitress Jenna Hunterson who finds herself pregnant and stuck in an abusive relationship. Despite the movie’s sorrowful nature, it is playful and has hints of comedy as the protagonist bakes her way through her unfavorable situations, including in a sticky affair with her slow-witted obstetrician.
Throughout the movie, as Hunterson bakes pies she narrates the ingredients and names them. She comes up with colorful concoctions such as; “Bad Baby” quiche pie, “Falling in Love” chocolate mousse pie, and “I Can’t Have No Affair Because It’s Wrong and I Don’t Want Earl to Kill Me” vanilla custard pie.
Even though this movie line-up won’t completely fill the void of dispersed families staying home during these trying times, it will bring a mixture of comfort, joy, and laughs during the Thanksgiving holiday season.
Source: History
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