10 Cozy Movies To Get You Through

Sometimes you just wanna pull up the hood of your Pikachu onesie, pull up a cozy movie, and shut the world out. But where to start?

Look, the world is a pretty overwhelming place. There are so many things to be whelmed by! Flocks of birds! Barking dogs! A particularly scary looking tree! The idea that Adam Driver will never pick up a lightsaber again! Hell even powerful Hollywood studio executives get overwhelmed and anxious! Albeit over silly things that will actually make them more money! In this world where even walking out the door can cause you to be whelmed in every direction, sometimes you just gotta slip into something more comfortable and sit down with a comfy-cozy-ass movie.

Before we start, let’s acknowledge that absolutely no one can seem to agree on what exactly constitutes a “cozy” movie anymore, as the term has fully outgrown itself in recent years. But if your idea of cozy is a comforting, uplifting, feel-good movie with bonus points for nostalgia, then these movies are the comfiest and coziest of them all.

The Princess Bride

It can’t get much more nostalgic than this sick-day classic! The Princess Bride is a story within a story. Home sick from school one day, a snot-nosed (literally) kid listens while his kindly grandfather reads him a story! A story about princesses! Giants! Hot farm boys! Screaming eels! Rats of unusual sizes! Being mostly dead! While those last things don’t seem that comfy, this movie is sure to warm your cold, overwhelmed little heart with the magic of true love.

My Neighbor Totoro

Have you ever wanted to be a child again? A child living tucked away in the Japanese countryside? Riding buses made out of cats? Playing with adorable soot creatures? Bouncing on the belly of a kindly half-bear, half-raccoon, half-cat monster that is 150% your best friend? Well now you can! Sort of! My Neighbor Totoro is a Studio Ghibli film about two little girls who do all of those things! And with enough imagination, you can pretend that you’re one of them!

Elf

Do you have a ginormous dad-shaped hole in your heart? Let Elf fill it in! With candy corn! And syrup! And the other Christmas elf food groups! Buddy the Elf is a giant-sized elf who begins to suspect that he isn’t like the others. This leads him on a quest to New York City to find his real parents. It turns out that his dad is a high-powered Manhattan publisher, and Buddy has to win over his cold heart with Christmas charm.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings is everybody’s comfort movie! Whether you’re a salt of the Earth 55-year-old man or an excitable little 20-year-old, you have already seen and loved this movie. My advice to you? Watch it again. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy’s timeless good-versus-evil story somehow has managed to defy nationality, culture, creed, and politics in order to somehow appeal to literally everyone. Even the grubbiest of libertarians will appreciate Frodo’s bootstrap-your-way-to-Mordor charm! And he doesn’t even HAVE boots!

Fantastic Mr. Fox

If no one read Fantastic Mr. Fox to you as a child, I feel sorry for you. But the movie is the next best thing! Wes Anderson’s claymation masterpiece is a modern-day classic! It’s about a fuzzy little family of foxes living in a cozy little hole in a tree who steal succulent chickens and ducks and bottles of cider from three mean old farmers! It’s about as autumnal as you can get without actually falling asleep in a leaf pile!

Dreamgirls

Yes, the coziness of this movie is debatable but I’ll fight for it.

Do you just want to be sung to by women with the voices of the angels above? Dreamgirls is your movie. Boasting one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, Dreamgirls is the story of three women who are given the chance of a lifetime singing backup for a national star. Do tensions eventually get high? Yes. Is the trio forced to reconcile with the cost of fame? Yes. Is there an internal struggle for the spotlight? Oh yes. But don’t let it get you down, their beautiful voices will guide you through it.

Big Fish

Still have a dad-shaped hole in your heart that not even Elf could fill? Try Big Fish! It’s the story of a man who has a strained relationship with his tall tale-telling father, and who simply wants to find out the truth of his father’s life amid the fiction. But the fiction is the best part! Werewolf circus conductors! Beautifully spooky little small towns! Giant catfish! Why recount how things actually happened when you can LIE!—I mean, MAKE THINGS FICTIONALLY BETTER.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day has a way of melting the most cynical hearts. After all, that’s the plot of the movie. Bill Murray plays a foul-tempered small-town news reporter, whose life is changed when he realizes he’s living Groundhog Day over and over again. After killing himself … a lot … and then waking up in his bed the same morning, he decides to make the best of it! By figuring out how to romance one of his coworkers that he has a major crush on! How does he do it? Lots of trial and error.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I get it, the spookier readers might be feeling a little bit left out by this list. After all, we don’t all find the same things to be cozy! A sweet little squirrel is going to think that a warm tree hole is the coziest of all, while a gothy little bat will find the most comfort in a dark, damp cave. The Nightmare Before Christmas is for that bat. It’s the story of Jack Skellington, Pumpkin King of Halloweentown whose world is turned upside down when he discovers the OTHER best holiday: Christmas. The skeleton tries to bring Christmas cheer to his native town’s gloomy residents, to disastrous effect.

How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon came out of NOWHERE to become one of the best children’s movies of all time. It’s the story of Hiccup, a young Viking who lives on an island that is constantly under the threat of dragon attacks. Seeking a way to end the violence, Hiccup befriends a wounded dragon and nurses it back to health. He and his new dragon bestie then bridge the divide between humans and dragonkind. Bring a blanket, because this film’s score is sure to give goosebumps. Tell me you can’t listen to “Test Drive” without getting tears in your eyes.

(featured image: Sony Pictures)