As we feel the first gusts of an autumn chill in the air, there’s often an instinct to cozy up with a spiced beverage and a cozy blanket and watch a nostalgic seasonal film. There are some movies that are simply destined to be watched in the fall. Some movies just put you in the mindset to march around crunchy leaves on your way to a pumpkin patch, you know? Here are some of our staff’s picks: 

Knives Out

Emma Callahan ‘29 

For me, fall means a new sense of crispness in the air, the changing of the leaves, and Chris Evans in his white fishnet sweater. In fact, it is this very sweater that truly makes Knives Out, in my opinion, one of the best movies to watch this fall! The film can be categorized as a modern murder mystery following a dysfunctional family, whom detective Benoit Blanc suspects to be behind the murder of wealthy novelist Harlan Thrombey. Detective Blank searches Thrombey’s gothic-style home for answers, set upon the backdrop of a vibrant New England fall! 

10 Things I Hate About You

Amanda Edge ‘26, Managing Arts and Leisure Editor

A movie that leaves you nostalgic for American high school, 10 Things I Hate About You is truly for everyone– from Shakespeare lovers to hopeless romantics. It is quintessentially fall in my mind, and has the air of back to school. Something about watching the gradual softening of Kat as she falls for Patrick mimics the gradual color change of leaves in the fall and how the trees shed their armor and lay themselves bare, just as Kat does in her iconic sonnet reading in English class. And it’s also an annual requirement to be enchanted by the urgency with which Joey and Bianca are looking for love. 

Of course, this is a grave over simplification of the plot of this movie. Which refreshingly highlights a female personality who knows her worth and values her intellect at a young age and whose confidence radiates off the screen. 

Watching this movie leaves you nostalgic for those high school days in the 2000s, even though they don’t particularly resemble our own— before Zoom and phones and AI, allowing us to romanticize in-person interactions in the hallways and organic (though slightly orchestrated) relationships of the decades that preceded us. 

Little Women

Ashley Taylor ‘27, Assistant Arts and Leisure Editor

Little Women is the perfect cozy film to watch this fall. While the story spans multiple seasons, the colors of autumn are present in each one. Characters bundle up in waistcoats, ribbons and lace in shades of red, brown and orange. Themes of family and friendship emerge as the March family laughs together by the warm glow of their fireplace. The giving season is evident in the way the Marches treat their friends, donating their breakfast to a family next door. 

Strong female protagonists emerge, giving us purpose and motivation in this season of new beginnings. Jo’s relentless desire to be a writer at a time when women struggled to be seen as intelligent and Amy’s brave call-out of the injustices of her time are ever moving.

“Well, I’m not a poet. I’m just a woman. And as a woman, there’s no way for me to make my own money. Not enough to earn a living or support my family…so don’t sit there and tell me that marriage is not an economic proposition because it is. It may not be for you, but it most certainly is for me,” Amy March says in one of the film’s endlessly quotable scenes.

This and other famous lines from the movie, bring viewers together. The timeless plotline of Laurie and Jo, reminds us of the power of love, and the wonder of connections between people. Being both lighthearted and meaningful, this movie hits us like the crisp fall air. 

Twilight

Gail Curtis ‘26, Staff Writer

Forget pumpkin spice and apple cider—the true flavor of fall is brooding vampires and the “skin of a killer” sparkling beneath a gray sky. Every year, when the hours of sunlight start to shorten and the sky trades its summer blue for the overcast clouds of autumn, I find myself returning, over and over again, to the Twilight saga. 

Based on Stephanie Meyer’s famous (or infamous) supernatural romance novels, the Twilight films are the perfect fall watch. The movies are filled with moss-draped and shadow-drenched forests, blue-filtered cinematography and an atmosphere thick with rain and fog. Their melancholy mood and themes of change and transformation perfectly complement the season’s shift into colder, darker days.

The films are set in the misty, damp beauty of the Pacific Northwest, in the small town of Forks, Washington—a place that, in Bella Swan’s own words, lives “under a near constant cover of clouds and rain.” The movies fully embody the moody palette of autumn. And with their blend of vampires, werewolves and teenage angst, the movies are a natural prelude to halloween—spooky, dramatic, nostalgic and strangely comforting.

I can already sense the eye-rolls and the complaints rolling in—but Gail, you say, these movies are terrible! They’re cringey! They’re garbage! And to that I say: so what? Why are we so wrapped up in the notion that everything we consume must be exalted, dissected and declared “worthy” by some impossible standard—why are we obsessed, as a culture, with measuring art only by its prestige, its awards, by whether it’s groundbreaking or dazzlingly complex or whether it reinvents something entirely—must every film be a razor-sharp psychological character study, or a breathtaking feat of cinematography, or a performance destined for an Oscar? 

Have we lost the simple ability to enjoy something naked of awards, prestige, or critical acclaim? Can we no longer simply sit with a story without weighing its complexity and its cultural, political, historical, socio-economical, environmental, philosophical, ideological, ethnographical significance? Have we forgotten how to embrace joy for joy’s sake? To like something not because it’s profound or perfect, but because it’s fun, because it makes us feel good, because its very flaws make it comforting and real, because its lead actors are super cute?

And so, the Twilight saga marches on in all of its cringe-inducing, melodramatic, angsty, awkward glory.  A love triangle between a sulky vampire, a heavily muscled werewolf and a girl who’s just not like other girls.

If you weren’t already convinced, now’s the time to get extra pumped about Twilight. This fall, we’re in for a special treat: all five films are being rereleased in theaters across the U.S. for a limited five-day run starting October 29. Even better, according to USA Today, each screening will also include interviews with author Stephenie Meyer and the film’s producers, offering “new behind-the-scenes stories and untold moments” from the making of the movies.

So buckle up and hang on tight, spider-monkeys—Twilight season is upon us!