Pizza night blockbusters!
10 great movies and shows to watch with the whole family (plus, guides for finding things to watch + Meg’s dough recipe)
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Hey y’all,
Our favorite family ritual is pizza night. Every Friday night, my wife Meghan makes four pies (scroll to the bottom for her dough recipe!) and we plop down on the couch and watch a movie. It’s the best. We look forward to it every week, and it’s extra exciting this week because Christmas Eve falls on pizza night!
My boys are 9 and 6, so it can be challenging to find a movie that we all enjoy that won’t scare the 6-year-old. Whether you have kids or not, you might have family gatherings coming up, so I thought it might be fun to collect our favorites.
Here are 10 movies and TV shows we all loved this year:
1. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
I was not expecting this Studio Ghibili classic to be such a hit. The boys had seen My Neighbor Totoro and liked it all right, but we all agreed that Kiki was the best thing we’ve seen this year. [Available on Blu-ray and streaming on HBO Max.]
2. Paddington 2 (2017)
Look, this movie is a masterpiece. No joke. I went in cold, having not seen the first movie and without knowing a single thing about it. It’s fantastic. The ending is more action-packed and satisfying than most movies, let alone kids’ movies. [Available on Blu-ray]
3. Bluey (2018—)
Bluey is an Australian TV show that is magic and charming and is the closest I’ve ever seen a show get to what it’s actually like playing with kids. Some suggest that it’s the best kids’ show of our time, and I have no argument with them. We like to blast the soundtrack on the way to and from school. [Streaming on Disney+]
4. The Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
This list could’ve just been all the Aardman Animation movies — other highlights were Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Chicken Run, and Robin Robin — but The Shaun the Sheep Movie was the real crowd-pleaser. The new Christmas special is also good. [Available on Blu-Ray and streaming on Hulu]
5. Tiny World (2020)
Incredible footage of tiny animals doing their thing in the world. Especially cool if you have a decent 4K TV. Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes videos: One cameraperson flew a drone through a forest while wearing VR goggles. Another cameraperson wore a special diving kit that caught his exhaled gas in a tank so he didn’t blow bubbles and scare fish. [Streaming on Apple TV+]