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With Thanksgiving upon us, let’s consider those memorable movie moments that capture family (and friends) around the dinner table or kitchen. When we all convene together like this, amazing things happen- and get said! Here are some great titles, old and new, that reflect this abiding truth.

While we will always pay homage to the iconic directors of yore — Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, and Bertolucci- we’re happy to note that since the millennium, Italian film has been thriving. But don’t take our word for it; see for yourself. Here are six unmissable Italian entries released within the past fifteen years.

What makes a movie cool? Perhaps the better question might be: what is cool? To introduce our list of coolest movies, it seemed like a good idea to start by defining, well, coolness.

An opening scene of a movie is like a cinematic thermometer. You take a movie’s temperature by that first scene. It holds you, intrigues you, grabs you — or it doesn’t. Though it’s true that plenty of great movies take their time building up our involvement, obviously they can’t take too long. Then there are those others that start off with a bang. It’s this latter group we’re celebrating today. Here are fifteen of our favorite movie openers, covering seven decades of filmmaking:  

The most famous quotes have become worn down with repetition: “Here’s looking at you, kid” from “Casablanca” (1942); “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” from “Gone With the Wind” (1939) and “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night” from “All About Eve” (1950). Happily, there are plenty more delightful zingers to be found in dialogue from our best movies.

I found it interesting (if not particularly surprising) that the top box office performers of the last several decades have tended to be longer movies. Scanning over tent-pole movies released since the millennium, blockbusters like the “Lord Of The Rings” series clock in at about three hours per installment, while “Avatar” and “The Dark Knight Rises” run well over the two and a half hour mark. Other more recent superhero franchises show the same trend. Examples: “The Avengers” (143 mins.), “Captain America” (136 mins.), and “The Amazing Spiderman” (142 mins.) Then there’s the talented but increasingly self-indulgent Quentin Tarantino, whose pictures most always go on and on. Most recently, “Inglorious Basterds” (153 mins.) and “Django Unchained” (165 mins.) prove my point. 

Grand performances from Helen Mirren and Om Puri notwithstanding, the recent trifle that is “The Hundred-Foot Journey” – a warmed-over feel-good flick about culinary wars and culture clashes — had us longing for more complex, satisfying foodie favorites.  In the spirit of Meg Ryan’s (faked) orgasm in Katz’s diner from “When Harry Met Sally,” which gave rise to one of the most iconic quips in film history (“I’ll have what she’s having”), we present a feast of flicks worthy of second helpings. Let the mouth-watering begin! 

Movies with similar titles often show up next to each other on the shelf, or line up in a search, but are usually very different animals—animals you don’t want to get mixed up.