Films That Feel Like Fall

When Harry Met Sally

Mystic Pizza

Hello, dear readers, and happy Autumn! Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite season. And not just because my birthday and my Christmas (Halloween) take place during Autumn, but because the weather, the changing colors of the landscape, and the crisp air makes me feel the most alive. Autumn, as I heard it once described by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, is the one that got away. When everyone seems depressed about the end of summer and the oncoming cold darkness of winter, we take Autumn for granted. If Winter is the death of a year, then Autumn is the last great party of it. The cold has yet to turn bitter, the allergens haven’t reached horrendous levels yet, and from my perspective, the vibes are the most immaculate during this time. Before we know it, it’ll be straight up cold, not chilly, and Winter will take over. So until then, let’s keep the cozy vibes from last week’s double feature going and celebrate some films that feel like fall. There are plenty of films that cast Autumn as its own character—where the scenery is so vibrantly auburn-tinted and alive, it feels essential to the storytelling. Films like Dead Poets Society, Practical Magic, and Halloween certainly fit this description, but as I looked outside my window and noticed very few leaves changing color, I knew how desperately I needed to see more Autumn on screen. My search immediately took me to a film that’d been on my list for far too long—Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s 1989 rom com classic: When Harry Met Sally. Now, as a chick flick connoisseur I went into this film knowing of its icon status, and I was eager to see it for myself. And while I did enjoy myself, this film was immediately not what I expected. When Harry Met Sally begins at the University of Chicago in 1977, where a freshly-graduated Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) is about to embark on a road trip to New York City, with her friend’s boyfriend Harry Burns (Billy Crystal). For reasons unspecified, Sally and Harry (the way the names should be ordered in the title, if you ask me), didn’t know of each other in college, and do not know anyone else going to New York, so they have no choice but to make the commute together. On the way, the happy-go-lucky and otherwise personality-less Sally gets to know Harry the pompous edgelord. I love Billy Crystal, okay, but I was simply in awe of how much of an asshole his character was, and how scary-well he played it. Sally and Harry have that age-old argument, where the man says men and women can’t just be friends, and the woman says it isn’t true. But what I realized as I listened to their familiar conversation, was the fact that this film was likely the first to engage in it on screen. There have been plenty of male characters in rom coms that have uttered this same outdated spiel, but at least in 1989 when Billy Crystal was being cynical, he was being original. Needless to say, Harry is attracted to Sally, Sally is disgusted, and by the time they reach New York, they want nothing to do with each other. Five years later, they meet again. This time, we see Sally kissing her boyfriend at the airport just as Harry walks by, pretending not to recognize her. When they end up on the same flight, they pick their conversation up as if it had never ceased—and such is the case when they meet again, another five years later. Now older, wiser, and both single, Sally and Harry decide suddenly that they can be friends, and the rest of the film they are each other’s reluctant wing-person. Sally and Harry’s conversations are entertaining, intriguing, and at times hilarious. Their chemistry is confusing, but undeniable. Their attraction to one another is also a bit confusing, but it is somehow believable. It is perpetually Fall in this movie, and the sweaters and dresses and fits that Sally serves were all so deliciously chic. The sprawling trees of Central Park were painted with the most glorious shades of orange and red, which made Harry and Sally’s walks and conversations underneath seem all the more romantic. I wanted to dive into the leaves and swim through them, I wanted to steal everyone’s wardrobe, and everyone’s apartment. The warm colors, and the warmth of Carrie Fisher’s presence, and the fact that so many scenes take place in the safety of someone’s bed really make this the ultimate cozy movie. Typically, my dislike of a main character like Billy Crystal’s would be enough to taint my experience, but my annoyance with him was far overshadowed by the loveliness of this film’s cinematography and the intimacy of its dialogue. In my opinion, Harry remains fairly obnoxious and unlikable until about the last fifteen minutes of this movie, and while I enjoyed Meg Ryan’s now-iconic performance (what I would give to watch the fake orgasm scene without it being spoiled beforehand) I still wish they had given her character a personality beyond “picky eater” [still better than In the Cut…]. Other than this, I’d say When Harry Met Sally is a fun, consistently comfy viewing experience, and one that you absolutely must have for yourself if you’re a fan of Autumn, romantic comedies, and very random soundtracks. In When Harry Met Sally, the soundtrack consists of about thirteen different covers of “It Had to Be You” and in the case of Mystic Pizza, it was just all saxophone. Just like When Harry Met Sally, Donald Petrie’s 1988 rom com Mystic Pizza took place in an idyllic, aggressively Autumnal place, and features men who are less than perfect. Mystic Pizza is named after a real pizza place in Mystic, Connecticut, and introduces us to Daisy and Kat Araújo (Julia Roberts and Annabeth Gish) and their friend Jojo Barbosa (Lili Taylor)—three Portuguese gals making a living at their neighborhood pizza place in their foliage-flecked, tourist hot-spot of a town. The film follows them during one boy-crazy Autumn where all three of them suffer from a love sickness of some kind. For the excitable Jojo, the troubles come from her fiancé Bill (played by an unrecognizably hot and young Vincent D’Onofrio) who wants to marry her desperately. But Jojo doesn’t want to make that commitment just yet, and for now just wants to enjoy having non-wedded, no-pressure-to-have-a-baby sex with her boyfriend, who then, in an act of incel behavior, calls her nympho. For the gorgeous and restless Daisy, it’s her new rich white-bread boyfriend Charles Gordon Windsor Jr. (Adam Storke), who is predictably a douche and unpredictably not the worst man on the list. For the youngest, most ambitious, recently-accepted-to-Yale-on-a-partial-scholarship Kat, it’s her new boss—a man named Tim (William R. Moses) who she begins to babysit for, and fall for. Unfortunately for Kat, Tim is the scuzziest scumbag of the bunch, and he’s also… extremely my type! (🤮) Throughout the course of this film, these young women learn lessons about love, class disparity, and the power of female friendship. They partake in some port-city hijinks and are there for each other when it comes time for the hardest lesson of all: that men suck. Along with a young Matt Damon, Mystic Pizza features a healthy dose of Autumn enchantment—sprinkling in a little extra charm with each frame of foliage and leaf-addled lush. This film, much like When Harry Met Sally, just left me with an overwhelming urge to visit a city that actually has a real Fall—not this half-ass, straight-from-Summer-to-Winter Autumn we experience in Texas. Both of these films were a little bit rom, a little bit com, and just the right amount of dram to keep them both fairly low-stakes. And if you can handle the relentless saxophone, you might just find these films to be the coziest ever made. So grab a warm drink, drape yourself in sweaters, cuddle up to these films that feel like fall, and I guarantee you’ll feel supremely and spectacularly cozy. 🍂