By David Weiner
1:00 AM PST, November 25, 2010
From dysfunctional families to annoying travel tales, we've rounded up some of the best movies about Thanksgiving or featuring memorable Turkey Day scenes. Enjoy!
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'Thanksgiving' trailer from 'Grindhouse'
Dimension Films
Not a real full-length movie, actually, but a tongue-in-cheek fake trailer by 'Hostel' director Eli Roth (wedged in between genre films by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino), 'Thanksgiving' is a bloody homage to such holiday slasher films as 'Silent Night, Deadly Night' and 'Valentine's Day.' Featuring Eli himself getting beheaded, the trailer includes everything from a holiday parade massacre (also with a beheading) and a roasted body on the dinner table (with strategically placed temperature gauge) to a trampoline-bouncing cheerleader landing a split on a butcher knife. Ouch!
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Get 'Grindhouse'
'Miracle on 34th Street'
20th Century Fox
The perfect transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas, this delightful 1947 classic stars Edmund Gwenn as the real Kris Kringle, who is hired to play Santa Claus for the Macy's Thanksgiving parade in Manhattan. When a young Natalie Wood refuses to believe Kringle is the real St. Nick -- and he's committed to a mental institution -- he goes out of his way to convince everyone that he's real. In the 1994 remake produced and co-written by John Hughes, Richard Attenborough plays the jolly St. Nick.
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'The Ice Storm'
20th Century Fox
Tobey Maguire and Christina Ricci play siblings enduring adolescence in 1973 Connecticut in this often-amusing but bittersweet family drama directed by Ang Lee. At the dinner table, dad Kevin Kline invites his daughter to say grace, prefacing with, "And this Thanksgiving, no yelling, no hysteria, especially with your grandpa not here, although we miss him." Ricci responds with, "Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday, and for all the material possessions that we have and enjoy; and for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands; [and] stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed..." Sigourney Weaver and Elijah Wood round out the excellent cast.
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'Pieces of April'
United Artists
Katie Holmes garnered critical raves for her performance as the black sheep of yet another dysfunctional family (we're starting to see a pattern here) who invites her clan to her run-down New York City apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. Complications begin when she realizes her stove doesn't work, but with the help of her compassionate neighbors (including Sean Hayes), she's just barely able to get it together for her demanding mother (Patricia Clarkson), optimistic father (Oliver Platt) and skeptical siblings.
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Get 'Pieces of April'
'The House of Yes'
Warner Bros.
Parker Posey thinks she's Jackie Kennedy and carries a handgun to the annual family gathering in this dark, offbeat comedy about sibling jealousy and serious instability. Posey plays a young woman on medication who becomes unhinged when her twin brother (Josh Hamilton) returns home to reveal he's engaged (to Tori Spelling, no less). "I'm going to go baste the turkey and hide the kitchen knives," says mom Genevieve Bujold when things start to get out of hand. Nothing like a little tale of incestuous fraternal twins for the family holiday…
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Get 'The House of Yes'
'The Accidental Tourist'
Warner Bros.
"Is this the Thanksgiving we all die?" asks William Hurt, eyeing the sickly, undercooked turkey in this droll film about grief and re-igniting passion for life. Hurt plays a depressed travel guide writer moving through existence after the death of his son and separating from his wife (Kathleen Turner). Geena Davis (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) is the kooky dog trainer whose perspective on life helps Hurt to open up and embrace love again. The film is highlighted by a Thanksgiving scene in which Hurt's sister has a minor breakdown over the collective criticism of her cooking in front of her boyfriend.
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Get 'The Accidental Tourist'
'Home for the Holidays'
Paramount
Jodie Foster directed this dysfunctional family gem that features Robert Downey Jr., Claire Danes, Steve Guttenberg, Holly Hunter and Anne Bancroft. Hunter plays a single mom who loses her job and braces herself for Turkey Day with her crazy family at her parents' house. The tagline: "This holiday season, millions of families will gather together… and wonder why." Everyone has a few nuts in their extended family, and this film either makes you feel right at home or helps you realize you don't have it so bad. Pass the gravy!
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Get 'Home for the Holidays'
'Alice's Restaurant'
United Artists
A folk classic, Arlo Guthrie's anti-establishment, 20-minute song about Thanksgiving, littering and the draft became a sprawling, Robert Altman-esque movie directed by Arthur Penn in 1969. Starring Guthrie himself, the film recounts the events of the humorous song, based on a true story, in which Guthrie enjoys a Thanksgiving dinner with friends, goes to throw out the garbage at the dump (which is closed), then adds his small pile to a big pile of roadside trash and gets arrested for littering, setting off a chain of comical misadventures with the law and the hippie community. "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant…"
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Get 'Alice's Restaurant'
'Hannah and Her Sisters'
Orion Pictures
Regarded as one of Woody Allen's finest, the film follows, well, Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her sisters, Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey), and their respective lives, loves and infidelities in between Thanksgiving get-togethers (Woody's 'Broadway Danny Rose' also features Thanksgiving celebrations). Wiest and Michael Caine each won an Oscar for their supporting performances in the movie, but Caine wasn't around to pick up his statuette because he was busy shooting 'Jaws: The Revenge.' Hope it was worth it…
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Get 'Hannah and Her Sisters'
'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'
Paramount
Steve Martin and the late John Candy co-star in this hilarious and heartwarming 1987 road trip comedy from John Hughes about a high-strung ad exec (Martin) whose life is turned upside-down by an overly talkative but well-meaning shower curtain ring salesman (Candy). The tagline says it all: "What he really wanted was to spend Thanksgiving with his family. What he got was three days with the turkey." If 'Due Date' cracked you up, 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' is the comedy template.
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Get 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'