Rosamund Lannin

Featuring classics, new favorites, and more to watch with your friends and family.

Oh, American Horror Story. You have such campy, spooky promise, and when you deliver, you really deliver. The scenery was always a draw: even when the plot flailed, the sets gave your eyeballs a treat. Now that AHS is gradually leaving Netflix, queue up your television and relive the architectural highlights, before the episodes disappear like so many bodies. Begin with Hotel, arguably the weakest season and the first to get the axe.

We’ve got slightly under two weeks until the big meal. Get in the mood with the best Thanksgiving episodes—or at the very least, create seasonal background noise while you scour Pinterest for stuffing recipes. Thanksgiving is a thing in the Belcher household. Mr. Fischoeder rents out Bob’s family to impress an old flame. Bob gets weird with his eternal flame, the turkey. Hijinks ensue. Also good: every other Thanksgiving episode.

This year I’m thankful for a lot, but mostly Pieces of April. There’s a lot to love about the 2003 classic: the fresh and touching plot, the real look at relatives, and stellar performances from Katie Holmes, Derek Luke, and wish-they-were-your-parents Oliver Platt and Patricia Clarkson. But a big part that got me is that Thanksgiving takes place in an apartment on the Lower East Side.

“Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems, in a place that perhaps you’ve seen in your dreams,” opens the 1993 classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. Going opening night as a kid felt like a dream; seeing it at 10pm and getting the Kids’ Combo blurred reality’s edges in the best sugar high, up past my bedtime kind of way. For some people, Die Hard is their edgy holiday movie.