Best Thanksgiving Movies: Your Holiday Movie Feast

Sharpen those carving knives, you got family coming over! Also, it’s Thanksgiving. This is a holiday all about looking back and all around you and being grateful, a feeling we think you’ll have once you finish our guide to the best Thanksgiving movies of all time.

The sentimentalism game is usually reserved for Christmas movies – Thanksgiving movies are about the family dynamic, both good and bad. Films like Pieces of April and Planes, Trains and Automobiles focus on the positive, as stressful as traveling or preparing meals may be. Meanwhile, The Ice Storm and Krisha take bitter delight in the way the holiday forces people who may not be all too fond of each other together. And other movies you’ll find here, like Funny People or Addams Family Values, may not be the first thing you think of when approaching this time of year, but have memorable or significant scenes set around the Thanksgiving table. Some films get a little greedy: Miracle on 34th St. and The Santa Clause are primarily known as Christmas movies, while Holiday Inn literally covers all the holidays. But what’s Thanksgiving without overextending your appetite?

And recently, we’ve blown open the invitation list! Let’s welcome in horror movies (Thanksgiving), new blockbusters (Spider-Man and Rocky have great Thanksgiving scenes), romances (Sweet November, The Object of My Affection), ’90s family comedies (Son-in-Law, Beethoven), cult classics (Dutch, The Wiz), silent comedy masterpieces (The Gold Rush), and Fantastic Mr. Fox, animated with thankful, auburn family joy. From there, we ranked all the films by Tomatometer, with Certified Fresh films first.

Now we’re ready to serve up this cornucopia of cinema, so enjoy the best Thanksgiving movies ever!