Many readers are in transit for the holidays to see family, friends, or visit new places during the break from school and work. These trips can be a little stressful and may require you to need to spend some quiet time where you don’t have to chat with your family about big and small things. That’s where movies come in. 2017 offered us a good selection of films to watch with your loved ones—or to watch by yourself while you get away from them for a couple hours.
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| Photo credit: The Lego Batman Movie/IMDb |
I’ve compiled a few different lists of how this can work.
If there are no young kids in your family, you can get a little more adventurous with your movie suggestions. That’s right, you can watch stuff with some of those gnarly “adult themes” everyone’s so fond of.
- Split will freak you and your folks out in a very entertaining way with multiple personalities and more than a few shocking moments. Each crackle in the fireplace will heighten the tension on the screen. [My full Halfstack review here]
- Logan is obsessed with the ending of an era, which makes it a great new take on the westerns that have set dads’ imaginations ablaze since the beginning of the film industry.
- Five Came Back is a story about heroism, Hollywood, and how they combined to help us tell the story of World War II. Plus Meryl Streep narrates and people love Meryl Streep.
- Win It All is about scrappy losers doing scrappy loser things. It’s also sweet and full of hope for the future, even if that hope is, “This guy might not get his legs broken for losing a criminal’s money in a card game.” [My full Halfstack review here]
- Logan Lucky is a bright and eternally fun heist picture. It’s good to sit the family down and have a laugh at a Southern-accented Daniel Craig blowing stuff up, both on purpose and accidentally. [My full Halfstack review here]
If there are some youngsters in the clan, fret not. There were a ton of family-friendly flicks out in 2017 that are full of colors, adventure, and meaningful life lessons that folks of any age can use in their lives.
- The Lego Batman Movie is one of the funniest movies of the year, plus it’s all about how necessary it is to build a family around yourself. It’s exactly the type of thing to watch with every member of your own family. [My full Halfstack review here]
- Kedi is a documentary about stray kitties walking around Turkey. It’s adorable and moving because of what these cats mean for the people who encounter them every day.
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is something you might want to avoid if you have kids under the age of 12, but if you’re from a family of tweens and up, this is a zany space opera. Every shot is jammed with so many ideas that you can’t help but get totally immersed in this vision of the future. [My full Halfstack review here]
- Spielberg helps you get to know the man behind E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s all you need to know.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is about disappointing family members—and about building a better family for yourself when blood relatives don’t pan out. For those of you who’ve had to mix and match and tweak what “family” means, this one will mean a lot. [My full Halfstack review here]
These movies are probably the darkest of the bunch, but sometimes you feel a little dark after being dragged into the umpteenth unwanted political “discussion” (re: screaming match) of the holiday season at the dinner table. These movies reflect on human darkness, but each offers its own kind of cathartic relief from those things.
- Colossal recognizes all the kinds of emotional manipulation you may endure from your family members in this time—and it attaches that manipulation to a monster movie allegory about gender power dynamics and how people use each other. But by the end, you’ll feel like there’s a way out of such dysfunctional behavior. So, you know, catch it on a laptop or tablet in your childhood bed after everyone has driven you a little insane.
- Tour de Pharmacy is an off-color comedy that will make you chuckle to yourself without having to let on to your parents that you know disgusting things about the world. [My full Halfstack review here]
- Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King is part stand-up special, part one-man show. The Daily Show’s Hasan Minhaj tells his family’s (usually hilarious but also occasionally painful) immigration story and what it meant to him growing up—and how this country can be better for families like his.
- The Bad Batch is a violent post-apocalyptic flick where limbs are severed from people’s bodies. It’s the type of movie you do drugs during, which makes it perfect to watch in the privacy of your high school bedroom. [My full Halfstack review here]
- John Wick Chapter 2 has a lot of headshots. Not, like, pictures of actors. Blood explodes and fights are as delicately choreographed as anything at the ballet. It’s such a blast, but probably not for the more squeamish family members.
These 15 movies should give you an informed opinion about what to watch when your family members bicker about what to put into the Blu-ray player over the next several days. Good luck with the other parts of traveling. From me and the rest of the Halfstack family, have a great holiday break. We’ll be seeing you!
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