Looking for film-related things to do in November? Give the month three appointments: a movie in a theater, a film outside your usual tastes, and a Thanksgiving viewing worth discussing afterward. That combination offers discovery, company, and a reason to revisit something familiar. For the holiday slot, our pick is Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a comedy whose understanding of hospitality becomes more uncomfortable—and more moving—the closer you look.
This is an editorial viewing plan, rather than a schedule of confirmed local screenings. Choose the dates around actual availability, and leave enough space between films to remember more than their endings.
Start With One Deliberate Theater Outing
Choose your first November screening by asking what you want from the experience. A comedy offers the pleasure of hearing laughter spread through a room. An unfamiliar drama gives you uninterrupted time with characters you might otherwise abandon after ten distracted minutes. A repertory screening can reveal how differently a familiar performance plays when a face fills your field of vision.
Before buying, check the venue, date, start time, running time, language, subtitle information, and accessibility details. If a discussion or guest appearance is the attraction, confirm that it belongs to your specific screening. A film appearing in a monthly guide does not establish that every presentation includes the same extras.
Keep the evening simple: one film and time afterward to talk. Ask your companion which character they initially misjudged. That question usually produces a more revealing conversation than an immediate score out of five.
Make Room for an Unfamiliar Film
For your second appointment, change one habit. Try a documentary if you usually choose fiction, a subtitled feature if your viewing rarely crosses languages, or an older film whose reputation you have never tested yourself. You do not need to turn leisure into homework; a single purposeful departure is enough.
When comparing possibilities, look for a concrete dramatic question: What does someone want, and what might pursuing it cost another person? Our discussion of comparing three films through character and relationships offers a useful starting point. Recognition can introduce a title, but your interest should survive beyond the publicity.
If a documentary becomes your choice, pay attention to who gets to explain events and who remains outside the frame. Our analysis of testimony and responsibility in NAZA explores why that distinction matters. Treat the question as a viewing tool, without assuming that different documentaries share the same methods or conclusions.
Your Thanksgiving Anchor: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
John Hughes’s 1987 comedy stars Steve Martin as Neal Page and John Candy as Del Griffith. Neal wants to reach his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving; a flight diverted to Wichita entangles him with a talkative salesman whose company he can barely tolerate. The premise supplies the travel trouble. The performances supply the reason to care.
Spoiler warning: The following review discusses major scenes and the ending. First-time viewers may prefer to watch before continuing. Despite its holiday setting, this is an R-rated comedy with strong language.
Neal: The Frustration of Losing Control
From Neal’s perspective, the journey is an escalating violation of reasonable expectations. He has somewhere to be. He wants quiet. He expects a reservation to result in an available car. None of those desires makes him a villain, which is essential to the comedy: we understand his irritation before we begin questioning how he expresses it.
Martin makes Neal’s composure look physically expensive. His reserve is a performance the character gives to everyone around him, and every inconvenience makes maintaining it harder. The rental-counter confrontation is funny because the language finally catches up with the anger already visible in his body. It is also ugly. Being wronged by a system does not automatically make every person representing it a legitimate target.
My reading is that Neal’s central mistake is confusing efficiency with moral worth. Del wastes his time, so Neal begins treating Del himself as a waste of time. Hughes lets that slide from impatience into contempt become painfully audible when Neal attacks his companion’s conversation and habits.
Del: Being Annoying Does Not Cancel Dignity
Candy does something more difficult than making Del lovable. He allows him to remain exhausting. Del intrudes, talks too much, and fails to recognize boundaries. A version of this movie that quietly removed those qualities would make Neal’s eventual kindness much easier—and much less meaningful.
When Del answers Neal with “I like me,” the scene changes its terms. He is no longer trying to win a conversational contest. He is insisting that another person’s disgust cannot serve as a complete account of his existence.
The force of Candy’s performance lies in the gap between the words and their delivery. The statement sounds firm, yet the hurt underneath it is unmistakable. Del can defend himself and still need reassurance. That emotional contradiction gives the scene more weight than a clean speech about self-respect would have.
The Ending Changes What We Have Heard
Del’s earlier assurance, “My wife likes me,” becomes devastating when he reveals that Marie died eight years before. His references to marriage have allowed Neal—and us—to imagine a home waiting at the other end of his journey. The revelation exposes how much we supplied without asking.
That does not mean every joke should suddenly be translated into a symptom of grief. Del remains a salesman, a nuisance, and a generous companion. The ending works because it adds an unseen dimension to someone already vividly present.
Neal’s decision to return for him is therefore the film’s crucial action. He interrupts his own arrival to notice another person’s situation. Bringing Del home makes hospitality something enacted, with an actual guest, rather than a warm feeling attached to a holiday.
What Deserves Discussion After the Credits
The movie is not beyond criticism. Some of its embarrassment comedy relies on anxious ideas about male intimacy that feel dated. Its closing welcome also offers emotional resolution without explaining how Del’s life might change afterward. Thanksgiving dinner cannot repair years of loneliness.
For me, that limitation makes the final gesture worth considering rather than dismissing. Neal cannot solve Del. He can stop treating him as an obstacle and make room for him. The distinction gives the ending its persuasive scale.
After your November screening, ask whether you needed Del’s bereavement to believe he deserved kindness. If the answer is yes, the film has exposed something uncomfortable about how sympathy works. Its deepest challenge is to extend dignity before a stranger supplies a sufficiently moving explanation. That is a substantial thought to carry out of a movie night—and into the holiday gathering that follows.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: November 3, 2026 at 07:21:56 PST (Los Angeles time)
