20 Movie Families to Spend Your Holidays With
The coming holiday season will be a particularly strange one, with family gatherings limited and travel options diminished because of the coronavirus pandemic. One of my favorite traditions as fall edges into winter is watching movies, whether that means corralling the family to catch new releases at the theater, or arguing over the best film to enjoy at home on the couch. With so many rituals upended in 2020, I’ve assembled a list of family movies for every mood, whether you’re looking to laugh, cry, be horrified, or just ponder the curious personal dynamics that can arise this time of year.
Some of the movies here are more traditional, warm, and fuzzy, but in the vein of the other watchlists I’ve compiled this year, I’ve tried to cast a wide net, including stories from around the world that touch on themes of community, belonging, and selfhood. These 20 movies include terrible families, makeshift families, lost families, and stories about finding comfort and hope without a conventional support system. Spanning epic romance, action and adventure, bleak horror, tragicomic farce, and quiet drama, these highly rewatchable films are, above all, simply excellent cinema.
[Read: 25 feel-good films you’ll want to watch again—and again]
A Little Princess (1995, directed by Alfonso Cuarón)
Many classics of children’s literature are about an orphaned or abandoned protagonist searching for safety and love. The heroine of , Sara Crewe (played by Liesel Matthews), is sent to a boarding school by her loving father as World War I rages, but when word arrives that he has died, she’s left at the mercy of the cruel headmistress. Alfonso Cuarón’s English-language filmmaking debut, an adaptation
