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But America’s abundance does not apply to movies about Thanksgiving.  Certainly some exist, but if you review a list of movies about Thanksgiving, the sad fact is that there are very few good ones.  Many are PC retellings of the original Thanksgiving story – one guess as to who the villains are (Hint:  It’s the dudes with buckles on their hats).  Others are tiresome melodramas about “quirky” families that reaffirm their bonds over plates of turkey, with “quirky” — meaning “annoying.” 

There simply is not a worthy list of Top Movies about Thanksgiving to be made, but there is a solid list of Eight Great Movies for Thanksgiving.  These are films that embody, in some way, what Thanksgiving really means.  You are free to disagree with the choices – as some Marines recently did regarding another list – but the freedom to think for yourself is but one of many things to be thankful for.  Maybe these movies don’t all feature turkey and trimmings – though a couple of them do – but you can’t go wrong with them this Thanksgiving Day:

1.   A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving:  No, this is not a movie.  So sue me.  Anyone who grew up in the 70’s or 80’s remembers this classic cartoon version of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang’s turkey day.  But this is not just for kids.  One of the interesting things about Charles Schultz’s kid characters is how utterly mercenary and oblivious they can be, latching onto the crassest materialism and taking what they have completely for granted.  Their behavior is really awful – much like the behavior of many adults.  But leave it to good ole Charlie Brown and his quietly intelligent pal Linus to get them to focus on what’s important.  There is a reason that, even today, every kid my kids have a play date with has a DVD of this treasure on the shelf between the Dora the Explorer and the Robo-transmorphatron adventures.

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2.  Bolt:  You know, Disney sure comes in for a lot of grief – some of it deserved – but this animated story of a little girl and her loyal dog is fantastic on every level.  It’s a technical marvel – the visuals are stunning.  But it’s more than that.  The ending is a powerful evocation of a family learning to appreciate what is important.  Throughout, it’s sad, funny, and stirring, plus it carries a powerful message about bravery and sacrifice.  When Bolt refuses to leave his little girl as a building burns around them, all I could think of is how great it was to finally see a movie that honors courage without turning it into some sort of ironic joke.

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3.  The Wizard of Oz:  This is a Thanksgiving perennial on those non-communist Ted Turner networks.  This vivid fantasy is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and still kicks butt over just about everything that’s been released since.  You can even see its cultural impact in the Avatar trailer, where the grizzled Marine commander announces to his troops: “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”  There are flying monkeys, melting witches, dwarfs and/or midgets – plus a wonderful lesson about being thankful for what you have been given.   What more could you want?

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4.  The Shawshank Redemption:  This grim prison drama is included for one reason – the scene where the clever Tim Robbins makes a deal with the guards to do a hot, dirty job for them and ends up enjoying a bucket of cold Cokes on the roof with Morgan Freeman and their pals.  That scene provides some useful perspective about the meaning and value of material goods, enjoying the fruits of one’s labors, and the importance of freedom.

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5.  The Sound of Music:  Yeah, it’s a little on the sugary side.  And yeah, I have a beef with it because it gave my mother the bright idea to inflict the first name of one of the lederhosen-clad yodelers upon me.  But this is a true family film in every sense of the word – it both celebrates family and you can safely watch it with your family without having to worry that you’ll end up having to explain some manner of perversion to your five-year old.  The widower Baron von Trapp falls for the beautiful governess he hires to wrangle his Teutonic task force during the first two thirds of the film.  The last act focuses on their attempt to flee Austria after the Nazis decide to “invite” the Baron to take a commission in the German navy.  Christopher Plummer’s righteous anger as he tears down a swastika flag will thrill anyone with a love of freedom, and his composure as he faces down the young brownshirt is awesome.  The von Trapps do, of course, escape (though not necessarily to “Climb Every Mountain”) and in reality they ended up in America.  We can all be thankful that we are lucky enough to live in the place where the world’s oppressed want to be.

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6.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:  We can be thankful both for a government where, despite all the corruption and cronyism, our voices will eventually be heard.  And we can be thankful for men like Jimmy Stewart, not only a great actor but a veteran who flew perilous bomber missions over Germany when he could have safely flown a desk.

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7.  Blackhawk Down:  Why list a war movie on a list of Thanksgiving films?  Because we should all be damn thankful that we have men (and women) out there like the Americans who fought it out against overwhelming odds in Mogadishu in October 1993.  The fierce loyalty those troops showed, braving incredible odds to rescue their comrades from the Somali militia hordes, should give us pause to reflect on the price of the great material and spiritual bounty our nation enjoys.  America didn’t just happen – it was earned.  Today, tens of thousands of Americans are overseas continuing to earn it this Thanksgiving.  And if you are so inclined, you might want to say “Thanks” with a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project.

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8.  Planes, Trains and Automobiles:  The best John Hughes “adult” movie, and possibly his best movie overall.  Steve Martin is the uptight businessman trapped in a hilarious odyssey of misfortunes with John Candy’s lovable slob as he desperately tries to make it home to his family for Thanksgiving.  It’s funny.  It’s really, really funny, as literally everything that can go wrong goes astonishingly wrong.  Cars catch fire, wallets are stolen, deer are resurrected and buns are mistaken for pillows.  But beneath it all is the kind of heart missing from so much of the soulless, cookie-cutter dreck that passes for comedy today.  The ending truly sums up the spirit of Thanksgiving and highlights the kind of generosity of spirit that comes naturally to most Americans.  And there is another thing to be thankful for – the joy that John Candy brought to all of us during his far too short life.

This year, I’m particularly thankful to be in the USA for Thanksgiving.  Whether you are home with your loved ones, or serving our country overseas, Happy Thanksgiving.

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What is the enduring fascination with a 55-year old flick that stars a fake Japanese reptile stomping Toyko into matchsticks?  The first thing is that Godzilla is a truly entertaining movie.  Actually, it’s two movies.  The version most Americans have seen on TV is the 1956 re-cut version of the 98-minute original Japanese movie, Gojira.  Some American producers decided it could make them a bundle, but it needed a bit of familiarization before the American audience would accept it.  They hired a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr to film some awkward footage as American reporter “Steve Martin,” cut out a lot of draggy filler, and shipped the slimmed down 80-minute final product to drive-ins all over the fruited plain.

Gojira is pretty cool on its own and is available in an awesome DVD collector’s edition (which also includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters).  Gojira is very dark, both literally and figuratively.  Black and white is really the only way to see Godzilla in action, and most of the monster attacks conveniently take place at night.  In the shadows and the flickering flames of the shattered city, you almost forget that it’s a dude in a dinosaur suit.

Under the capable, steady direction of Ishirô Honda, Gojira forgoes subtlety and is a pretty straightforward nuclear weapons allegory.  Godzilla represents the Japanese perception of what they saw as an uncaring, unstoppable and undeserved alien force of remorseless destruction wreaking havoc on their homeland, sort of like the rain of fire that descended upon Japan from American B-29s less than a decade before.

Accordingly, the central visual theme of the film is flame.  It surrounds Godzilla as he smashes through the city, it frames him on the horizon and it literally comes from within him, evoking both the pika don of the A-bomb detonations but also the even more destructive night fire bombing campaign of General Curtis LeMay.  There’s more going on here than just a monster movie – and post-WW2 Americans could not have cared less.

Of course, you don’t need to let this self-pitying revisionism get in the way of your enjoyment of the film.  I had two grandfathers bobbing out in the Pacific waiting to go in with the invasion the A-bombs ensured never happened.  I also served for nearly two decades in the 40^th Infantry Division, which was scheduled to be the first to hit the beaches and probably would have been wiped out on the sand.  Accordingly, my sympathy for the just consequences the Japanese suffered as a result of treacherously starting their brutal, savage war of conquest is distinctly limited.

But the film does provide an interesting insight into the attitude of willful indifference to the facts regarding the war that persists in Japan to this day.  For example, visiting the A-bomb museum in Nagasaki, one must search through the myriad, elaborate displays of destruction and suffering to find the most important thing any such museum might provide to its visitors – context.

Literally squirreled away near the back of the museum, I stumbled upon a small display of pictures.  They were not clearly labeled but it seemed that some were of Japanese-occupied China and one was particularly recognizable to an American – the burning hulk of the USS Arizona.  That was 2002; perhaps things have changed.  But walking out of that museum – or out of Gojira – one might be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese were just sitting around, minding their own business, enjoying some teriyaki and bottles of Asahi Super Dry, when all of a sudden these terrible things happened to them for no conceivable reason.

Sorry, Ishirô – you can try peddling that to somebody else cuz I’m not buying.

And the American producers were wise to cut that silliness out and American-ize Godzilla into something an audience that consisted of many people who had literally been shot at by the Japanese just a few years prior might want to watch.  They removed most of the allegory and, as the trailer shows, they gave Godzilla the full P.T. Barnum treatment, promising – and delivering – “dynamic violence” and “savage action.”

But they left the essential story elements in – Raymond Burr’s crudely inserted scenes simply frame the action and clarify the story so the movie can get right to the landscape-wrecking fun.  The movie starts off with some mysterious events going on out in the Pacific.  You don’t see the big guy at first – you just see shadows, bubbles, flashes, and huge footprints and you hear his legendary roar.  When Godzilla finally shows up in all his glory – the special effects here really are terrific – it’s just awesome.

There are still no laughs – well, no intentional ones – in Godzilla.  The people of Tokyo look and act terrified, and the movie plays the threat of the creature straight.  You see the injured and the dying – it’s not graphic, but the movie does show the figurative fallout of the monster’s rampage.  In the end, one character makes a noble sacrifice that will put a lump in your throat.  And, as with all the best monsters, you sympathize with Godzilla as he meets his fate.  It’s actually quite moving.

Sadly, after Gojira, the Godzilla series followed a regrettable pattern common to great genre flicks.  The first movie is a serious, uncompromising film made by serious people for serious people (but sometimes, as with Godzilla, fully appropriate for and beloved by kids too).  Then the series starts heading south.  Pretty soon your terrifying, mysterious, darkness-swathed wraith becomes a fat guy in a lizard suit wrestling King Kong for laughs in broad daylight.

It happens all the time.  The 1931 classic Frankenstein was a disturbing meditation on man and the limits of science.  By 1948, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was chasing Abbott & Costello around while Dracula and the Wolf Man looked on.  The original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a very tough, very creepy little horror flick.  I think Freddy Krueger fights Jason in the last sequel.  Or maybe Chucky.  Or Optimus Primus the Transformerzoid.  Who knows?  Who cares?

I haven’t seen any other Godzilla films in years, and it appears I have not missed much.  The movies reached their nadir after 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, where the big guy stopped stomping cities and started helping out lonely latch-key children.  Yawn.  From its very loud, very explodey trailer, 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars looks more like Godzilla v. The Matrix.

And don’t even mention the awful 1998 re-boot.  The new Godzilla featured a redesigned, doofy-looking monster plus some transplanted pseudo-raptors ripped-off from Jurassic Park chasing Matthew Broderick all over Manhattan.  This only reinforced one of the five key principles that guide my life – never see a movie starring Matthew Broderick that does not also feature Ben Stein.  Well, to be fair, Glory is pretty badass too – and itself no doubt a future “Movie We Like.”

Now, that is not to say that the later Godzilla films do not provide their guilty pleasures.  Godzilla v. The Thing (1964) is a lot of fun.  For some reason, a few years ago they insisted on re-titling it Godzilla v. Mothra, but to those of us who, in the 70’s, waited up late for Creature Features to see it, it will always be known by its original TV moniker.  And, as a bonus, it features the miniature Mothra twins’ ear-melting Mothra song.  And some of Godzilla’s later antics have a kind of goofy charm:

Another delightful Godzilla-related musical interlude is provided by the mind-boggling tune Save the Earth from 1971’s terrible, terrible Godzilla v. The Smog Monster. This is the one where Godzilla battles what appears to be a sentient, flying cow pie.  The song is the true lowlight.  It’s this combination of over-earnest 70’s enviro-nonsense and 60’s Japanopop that is mistranslated into English and served up for your listening pleasure.  You can almost see Al Gore sitting alone in his mansion, nodding his head, grinning, and snapping his fingers to its big beat as he gazes upon his Oscar and Nobel Prize.

Forget the rest of the series.  Stick with the original – okay, the second original.  Godzilla, King of the Monsters is a terrific 80-minute thrill ride mercifully free of the kind of clichéd movie industry nonsense that ruins so many movies today.  There’s no nauseating shaky-cam, the shots last longer than 0.35 seconds, and the whole thing is just plain cool.  The kids dug it big time.  Plus there’s a guy in a rubber dinosaur costume smashing up Tokyo who represents the awesome, righteous wrath of the American people – what’s not to like?

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title.  Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism.  Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman).  The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country.  (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.)

Kira’s formerly bourgeois family struggles to survive as the government outlaws most private trade, rations food and shelter, and implements health-care death panels.  (Okay, I might be confused about that last part.)

Life is a grind for all but the politically privileged.  The masses endure shortages and injustice, while well-connected Party members enjoy special treatment and profit from corruption.  Everything is politicized:  the economy, education, even science (as Party officials inform Kira and her fellow students).

But some forces override politics and even good sense.  At college one day, secret police officer Andrei (Fosco Giachetti) overhears Kira pouring scorn on Bolshevism.  Instead of arresting Kira, the officer is smitten with her.  In turn Kira develops a respect for Andrei bordering on love, despite their ideological differences.

Shortly thereafter, Kira has a chance encounter with the handsome, mysterious Leo (Rossano Brazzi), a free spirit like her, hunted by the authorities.  Kira and Leo have an immediate, almost animal chemistry.

This is one of the most affecting scenes in the movie, an instance of “love at first sight” made credible by the sublimity of the acting.  When they agree to see each other in a month in the same spot, you can’t wait for that month to pass so you can see what happens next.  From here unfolds a tragic romantic triangle marked by jealousy, deception and sacrifice.

WTL has some of Rand’s most layered characters.  In her later work, a character like Andrei the communist might be portrayed as an unalloyed villain.  But in WTL, Andrei gradually reveals a sensitive and decent humanity at odds with his repellent politics.  (Who hasn’t encountered such paradoxes in real people?)

The story behind the movie is nearly as remarkable as the film itself, further proof there is little daylight between fascism and communism.  (Jonah Goldberg, call your book editor.)

We The Living was made during World War II in Mussolini’s Italy, of all places.  The government warily allowed it to be filmed as a propaganda vehicle against the Soviet Union.  But when Mussolini realized the movie was a critique not only of communism but of all forms of statism, he banned it from theatres, where it was a smash hit.

The government rounded up and destroyed all copies of the film – save one, the original negative, which was secreted away.  As we are informed by the fascinating documentary (included among the DVD extras), the film’s reels languished unseen for decades until Rand’s attorneys went hunting for it among the Italian film community.

Duncan Scott, who produced the DVD release, explains how as a young editor he talked his way into recutting and subtitling the film alongside Ayn Rand herself. WTL had originally been released as two separate films.  They combined them, trimmed away some of the excess, and removed or redubbed pro-fascist propaganda speeches inserted at the insistence of the authorities.

Scott tells how in the original version, Andrei delivered a heated diatribe against the evils of capitalism.  Needless to say, this speech didn’t exactly belong.  Not content merely to change the subtitles, Scott actually hired a sound-a-like Italian actor so he could redub the voice track in Italian to match the new subtitles.

Unfortunately the digital transfer was done in 1987, and the cost of a high-definition remastering was prohibitive for this DVD release, so the picture quality isn’t quite as crisp as one might wish.  Nevertheless, it is completely watchable.

Considering the circumstances under which We The Living was made and later restored, this inspiring classic is a tremendous achievement, and a worthy addition to every liberty-lover’s DVD library — and to the too-brief list of films exposing the pitfalls of socialism in whatever form.