Thank You, Lord — for Seconds: A Five-Course Thanksgiving Film Fest [2025]

email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com

There are a few things that I look forward to more than stuffing my face & falling into a medically appropriate coma on Thanksgiving Day. Yes, the dinner provides me with invaluable time, allowing me to reacquaint myself with friends & family. Yes, the dinner gives me the opportunity to smush mashed potatoes with golden kernel corn and turkey stuffing into a single bite — thereby expediting the transportation of European explorer cuisine into one bite.

And — yes — Thanksgiving Day awards me the chance to escape the duldrums of my life by losing myself in the plot of any manner of movie before falling fast asleep.

Follow along with the Pickwick’s Thanksgiving motion picture watchlist, which embraces the familial sentimentality of the holiday season — and use those fleeting minutes between the films to embrace someone you love, carve yourself another slice of pumpkin pie, or use the restroom.

We have no shortage of time to do those things, after all. And we should all be grateful for that.

APPETIZER

4 p.m.

Dutch

C O M E D Y

***

Before Ed O’Neill starred as the heartwarmingly befuddled patriarch of the family in the award-winning TV sitcom Modern Family (2009), he was reinventing himself after his seasons’ long portrayal of family man Ed Bundy in FOX TV’s Married … with Children (1987).

Perhaps there’s nothing like the opportunity for holiday rebirth that Thanksgiving can provide. Written by John Hughes — screenwriter for The Breakfast Club (1985) & Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), among others — this quasi-father-son road trip movie stars O’Neill as the blue collar boyfriend of a single mom (JoBeth Williams) who entrusts him to bring her pampered son (Ethan Embry) home for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. But over the course of their seemingly doomed sojourn, the two will discover that they may have more to share with one another than what sits atop the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Unfortunately, Dutch is not currently available on a number of streaming services

LIGHT STARTER

6 p.m.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

C O M E D Y

***

Some say that half the fun is getting there, but I’m pretty confident that those people have never gone anywhere that took a long time to get there — or they’d know better.

And yet, when it comes to family, there were few filmmakers in the 1980s who knew it better than writer-director John Hughes. In addition to directing a handful of the most memorable teen films of that decade, Hughes always had his finger on the pulse of family, so it remains heartening that he wrote & directed a charming film about two men trying desperately to get back to their families on Thanksgiving weekend.

In the movie, an ad man (Steve Martin) must join forces with a gregarious, lovable, yet otherwise annoying salesman (John Candy) if the two hope to get back to the Windy City for the cozy, stomach-filled holiday. Along the way, the two will test each other’s nerves as well as test the lengths that they will go to in order to reunite with family.

Deviating from Hughes’ traditional teenager fare, Planes, Trains and Automobiles earned some considerable praise at the box office, especially from Chicago film critics Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert. Siskel called John Candy’s role the best of his career. Ebert wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times that “Steve Martin and John Candy don’t play characters. They embody themselves. That’s why the comedy, which begins securely planted in the twin genres of the road movie and the buddy picture, is able to reveal so much heart and truth.”

Discovering a poignant holiday film like this one shouldn’t require so much heavy lifting, but today — unfortunately — it does. Luckily, there are pictures like this one that make the journey worth your time.

Available on Paramount Plus

Main Course

8 p.m.

Prisoners

T H R I L L E R

***

Unfortunately, the Thanksgiving dinner — with its ambiguous ambrosia salad, two to three competing dishes of turkey stuffing, and family members who want to remind you that next year’s election could be the one — is sometimes difficult to stomach. But it’s important to weather storms like these. Because just like an uncomfortable family Thanksgiving dinner, director Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners will go down the gullet in a similar fashion.

In this taut thriller, two families’ worlds are suddenly transformed when one child from each family is apparently abducted on Thanksgiving Day. The heads of both households (played by Hugh Jackman & Terrence Howard) demand justice against the alleged perpetrator (Paul Dano), and — despite the efforts of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) — the investigation quickly fizzles out, leaving both families (and Loki) to pursue methods that may lead them to resolution if only at the expense of moral fortitude.

Far from a family-friendly Thanksgiving film, Prisoners intends to take viewers to deep, dark places — those places that may only be discovered if you listen hard enough for a simple child’s whistle. But listen closely enough, and you’ll discover a motion picture as heartwarming as it is harrowing in its humanity.

Available to rent on Amazon Prime

Palette Cleanser

10:30 p.m.

Black Friday

S C I – F I C O M E D Y

***

Before online shopping came along, Black Friday shopping — popularized by Best Buy, Shopko, Target, Walmart, and more — was all the rage.

And what a rage it was.

Black Friday exploits that rage. In the film, a team of department store employees begrudgingly clock in for a post-Thanksgiving dinner deluge of dollar-saving consumers. But they’ll have more than customers to contend with when an alien parasite lands nearby, turning the budget-friendly shoppers into bloodthirsty killers.

Available on Amazon Prime

DESSERT

12 a.m.

Thanksgiving

H O R R O R

***

Few would disagree that the best part of Thanksgiving dinner is dessert. A really good meal always saves the best for last. And so it goes with the Pickwick’s climactic film for this year’s cinematic fest — Eli Roth’s seasonal slasher Thanksgiving.

Creatively announced in a fake film trailer in the 2007 double feature (co-directed by Quentin Tarantino) Grindhouse, Thanksgiving was reportedly being written by both Roth and Jeff Rendell, according to a feature published by CinemaBlend, but years passed until Roth finally announced via Reddit in 2016 that the film’s script still needed work in order to live up to the expectations of the original trailer.

In a slasher film that holds up against some of the seasonally best, a Black Friday sale goes horribly awry. One year later, a masked killer sets her or his sights on some of the key survivors of the shopping tragedy.

What makes Eli Roth’s slasher so wonderfully unique is its quality when measured up to other motion pictures of its kind. Name them: Black Christmas (1974), Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981), April Fool’s Day (1986), Scream (1996), and more — Thanksgiving serves up something special that viewers won’t soon forget.

Available on Hulu

Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.

Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In

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