You tired? I’m exhausted. According to the internet, we should probably hydrate more. Also, we should watch a cozy movie.
There’s a catch, though: Nobody seems to know what a “cozy movie” is. By most popular definitions, it’s a film with low stakes and an underlying positive vibe. But then the same people who say that sort of thing will call the Harry Potter movies “cozy,” and so many people get attacked by giant snakes in those things. Is that cozy to you? Is that warm like a blanket? What about the bad guy with the enthusiasm for racial superiority who can kill you by pointing a stick at you and talking? How is any of that comfy?
The point is, as far as I can tell, a “cozy movie” is anything that makes the viewer feel chill, regardless of whether or not beloved British character actor Alan Rickman gets killed by a lizard in part of it. With that in mind, here are some subjectively calming flicks that you can watch under a blanket and feel less at odds with the world. Also, drink some water.
About Time
Quiet, thoughtful, and break-your-heart earnest, About Time sees its unassuming leading man in possession of MCU-style superpowers, able to travel back in time and rewrite his own history. Like most gangly straight white boys probably would if we were being honest with ourselves, he uses these abilities to try to marry Rachel McAdams and spend more time with his dad.
The Princess Bride
More than a decade before making Saw, a movie about sitting on a bathroom floor with a good friend and getting a free hacksaw, Cary Elwes made The Princess Bride, a story about machines that suck out your life force and vicious rats the size of pit bulls and threatening to cut a guy’s eyes out if he won’t let you kiss your girlfriend. Somehow, the first one is remembered as a horror movie, while the second is everyone’s favorite comfort film. Andre the Giant probably helped.
When Harry Met Sally
It’s been 35 years since When Harry Met Sally came out. It’s still funny, still relevant, and still brings up some great points about Casablanca. Whether the ending is realistic or not is a matter of debate that even the filmmakers had mixed feelings about. If nothing else, it’ll change the way you say “paprikash” forever.
The Royal Tenenbaums
Maybe Wes Anderson’s best movie, and you can argue about that as much as you want. This article started with a discussion about whether or not giant snake attacks are comforting. There was always going to be some subjectivity.
The Royal Tenenbaums is a perfect microcosm story about a broken family of exceptional people, forced to face reality in their own ways while also being confronted by the deeply imperfect father who’d rather leave reality out of the equation. Like most Anderson movie, it looks like it was shot in a dollhouse filled with tiny Wilson-shaped homunculi. It’s basically perfect.
Chef
In 2014, after more or less creating the MCU with Iron Man, but before being critically lambasted and shown the door for being too repetitive after his bosses told him to in Iron Man 2, Jon Favreau made Chef, a movie about a man who creates a beloved company, only to be critically lambasted and shown the door for being too repetitive after his bosses told him to with his follow up. It’s not subtle. It is wonderful, and it features the closest thing you’ll ever see to a scintillating on-screen intimacy in the form of footage of a man making a grilled cheese sandwich. But in a cute way.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Another Wes Anderson joint, this one adapts the work of Roald Dahl more honestly than most filmmakers were comfortable with up to that point. Marrying the director’s eye for detail perfectly with the inherently obsessive art of stop motion animation, it’s a visually stunning, deeply unique film. You are unprepared for how many feelings you’ll feel about a small fox with a sock on his head.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Everyone remembers where they were the first time they watched Eternal Sunshine, unless they had that memory scrubbed from their brains by unscrupulous doctors in unassuming clinics. Either way, it’s a movie that changed a generation of moviegoers’ expectations about relationships, forgiveness, and whether or not Elijah Wood seemed trustworthy. It’s also, for what it’s worth, widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time.
Superman
Before shared universes and billion-dollar box office expectations, Superman was something different – not better for being different, necessarily, but different. It tells a hopeful story about a world where absolute power, rather than corrupting absolutely, makes the powerful content to help as many people as possible. Played with earnestness, love, and occasional dorkiness, it’s every reassuring thing that a Superman story can be: Two hours of surprisingly low-anxiety scenes where you know that everyone is going to be okay.
The Holdovers
Alexander Payne’s latest made waves in 2023 with its quiet, deeply human story of the last few people left at a boarding school over the winter holidays. If you’ve ever wondered how much you could, hypothetically, learn to admire a man who looks like Paul Giamatti and smells like fish, The Holdovers should be your next movie night.
The Muppets
Recapturing the optimism of The Muppet Movie was a tall order. It was a film that ended with a hundred puppets singing about the magic of cinema while bathing in the light of a rainbow. Hippies really weren’t about half measures.
Then, after years of big screen dormancy, the Muppets were brought back through a confluence of the minds behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Ali G, and Flight of the Conchords. On paper, it should have been a cynical teardown of puppets that used to do musicals about classical literature. Instead, it was a full-throated love letter to the warm memories associated with karate-kicking diva pigs and frogs playing the banjo.