32 Movies That Scream, "I Was An English Major"

Required viewing for a BA in English.

Photo-illustration: Alexa Fishman; Everett Collection, Amazon Studios/Animal Kingdom/K5 Film/Mary Cybulski/ Alamy, Janus Films/Everett Collection, Mary Cybulski/Fox Searchlight Pictures, Hulu

Hello to the voracious readers, to the English literature majors, to the compulsive book buyers, and to those of you following IG poetry accounts. You are in a safe space now. 

As the great Kathleen Kelly reminds us, once you identify as a bookworm, there is no going back. You are a bibliophile for LIFE. 

But occasionally even the most "no e-readers, hard copies only" of us have to take a break from Shakespeare, Morrison, and Plath to watch a movie. So I have compiled a list of the most bookish, English major-y, literary movies for you to watch when you decide to look up from your dog-eared copy of Bleak House and fire up one of your streaming services.

Without further ado: An English Major's Guide to Cinema

1. Fire Island (2022)

Jeong Park/Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

While Fire Island Pines may not be the first place you think of when you think "literary enclave," I imagine that Pride and Prejudice is one of the first books you think of when you think "literary classic." As it turns out, Joel Kim Booster's FIP-set romantic comedy is a retelling of the Jane Austen classic à la Emma to Clueless. Only instead of five sisters trying to find a fortune via marriage, we follow five misfit lower-class gay besties who are looking for love in the rich, white, six-packed world of the gay vacation haven. SNL's Bowen Yang takes the Jane role (with a very cute James Scully as his Mr. Bingley). Booster is Lizzy, and Mr. Darcy is played by How to Get Away With Murder's Conrad Ricamora. The film itself is fun and sweet for even the most illiterate philistines but will be an especially fun romp for us Regency lovers who will be pointing at the screen and shouting, "That's Wickham!"

Watch it on Hulu. 

2. Harriet the Spy (1996)

Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

If you are looking for my literary origin story, you've found it: the story of a nosy writer, spying on her friends, family, and strangers, and then writing down a series of hot takes so bold she would have eviscerated the Ru girls in a reading challenge. ("Carrie Andrews thinks she's cool because she spent her summer vacation growing boobs.") Her parents don't know what to do with her, and her only refuge is in the form of her nanny, Golly (Rosie O'Donnell), who takes her to the movies and teaches her Keats poems. When she's called out for being rude, Harriet's solution is petty systematic revenge before she finally apologizes and gets to be editor of the school newspaper. I watched the classic Nickelodeon movie starring Michelle Trachtenberg, Eartha Kitt, and Gerri herself, J. Smith-Cameron (as Harriet's mom), constantly (I've got the orange VHS in my bedroom at home). I have a print of one of the book's illustrations hanging over my desk. I live my life aspiring to be a snooping Upper West Side writer with a fashionable coat. This is the movie for creating new English majors. Now, BRB — I'm gonna go watch this scene and cry.

Watch it on Prime Video. 

3. Drive My Car (2021)

Janus Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

As a bookish child of the '90s, I listened to many an audiobook cassette/CD, plenty of which were procured at a Cracker Barrel along I-75. In one of last year's most lauded international features, Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) takes to the car cassette player to learn his lines for an upcoming production of Uncle Vanya he's directing (so this is for those elite theater English majors). The captivating film (which is three hours long, but doesn't feel it), is based off a Haruki Murakami short story (the same magical combination that brought us Burning) and delves into the psyche of a recent widow, haunted by the recorded voice of his dead wife. There's nothing an English major loves more than grief paired with a literary reference, and this film delivering both...in the trunk of a Saab 900. 

Rent it on Prime Video. 

4. The Lost Daughter (2021)

Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Last year's Oscar race was jam-packed with literary adaptations ripe for the English major to watch. One of the indie heavy hitters was Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut about an Auden-loving professor and translator who is trying to enjoy a quiet beach vacation only to be disrupted by a loud family of tourists. The film is based on an Elena Ferrante novella (she of course wrote the acclaimed Neapolitan Novels) and watches Olivia Colman's prickly professor face off against a tattooed and scantily clad Dakota Johnson. ("I did invite you, Ellen.") The film examines memory and especially that of an adult wondering if perhaps she sacrificed her relationship with her daughters for a career that didn't pan out. Also, if anyone can figure out where Dakota Johnson's giant beach hat came from, let me know. 

Watch it on Netflix. 

5. Anna Karenina (2012)

Laurie Sparham/Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

There is nothing that screams English major more than carting an 800-page tome around campus, reading it at the library, in the cafeteria, and in your boyfriend's dorm room. To read one of the great Russian novels is as much an act of bicep strength and pretentious literary signaling as it is of reading comprehension. If you're reading AK, you want everyone else to know you're reading it. The Joe Wright adaptation starring Keira Knightley is hardly the first cinematic version (please enjoy this supercut of the various train scenes from the Anna Karenina multiverse), but it does take the snowy epic and transpose the whole thing to a retelling on a theatrical stage. The film is not only a mercifully edited affair (sorry to Levin and his constant musings about the proletariats), but a compelling reminder that even the oldest stories can be given a new life if they're shot and staged in a brand-new way. How does one perform a horse race in an auditorium? Watch to find out. 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

6. Atonement (2007)

Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

It is unclear whether or not Keira Knightley was technically an English major in the one year of college studying "art, history, and English literature" before she quit to be a full-time actor. It is clear, however, that she decides her roles based on likelihood that a Brit lit professor would show her movie in class. King Arthur. Pride and Prejudice. Never Let Me Go. Doctor Zhivago. Not to mention this Booker Prize shortlist title that I actually did watch for my contemporary lit class in college. Knightley plays a woman who has sex in a library (very English major) and is haunted for the remainder of her life by a choice her sister (and eventually a novelist, so very English major again) makes. Also any movie set in a British manor home just screams English major, whether it's based on a book or not. 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

7. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Mary Cybulski/Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection

If you're an English major and you are going to commit a crime (aside from stealing books from your college library as I did), it might as well be related to the letters of a dead B-list literary hero such as Fanny Brice. Thus is the plan of struggling writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy in an Oscar-nominated performance) in this bookstore caper. She and her GBF Jack (Richard E. Grant, also in an Oscar-nominated performance) hustle about '90s New York trying to make money by forging letters by famous writers. The film also encapsulates what it is to be a gay writer living in New York, which basically can be boiled down to shuffling along in the winter carrying 35 bags, bitching about your nemesis at Julius, and stealing toilet paper from your literary agent. 

Rent it on Prime Video. 

8. Love & Friendship (2016)

Ross McDonell/Roadside Attractions/Courtesy Everett Collection

As if you thought we were going to make it through this whole list without another Jane Austen adaptation. Guess again! But rather than highlight the ever popular, award-winning versions of Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, or Emma, I'm opting for the recent adaptation of her lesser known novel Lady Susan, which was published long after her death. Kate Beckinsale plays the titular, recently widowed protagonist, who in true Austen fashion, is on the prowl for a wealthy husband not just for herself, but for her daughter. No one does Regency wit and matchmaking quite like Jane Austen, and the film is a thrilling romantic dramedy. Also assuming you weren't assigned this book in college, the tale should be fresh — whereas we've all seen Mr. Darcy enough to quote the film version that won't come out for 50 years. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

9. Wuthering Heights (2011)

Curzon Artificial Eye

And while we're chatting about Miss Austen, we might as well get the obligatory Brontë sisters reference out of the way as well. English majors are born either Wuthering Heights gurlies or Jane Eyre gurlies (I'm not acknowledging the attention-seeking outliers who claim to be The Tenant of Wildfell Hall gurlies just to be edgy). I myself am a ride-or-die Jane Eyre stan, but I must admit that the Andrea Arnold version of Wuthering Heights is pretty damn good. It feels especially revolutionary as it casts Heathcliff as a Black man, bringing race into the equation, something that was definitely on Emily Brontë's mind to some extent, as she describes him as "dark-skinned." On a completely different note, my favorite weird element of WH is that there is definitely some weird necrophilia stuff going on in the novel. Not really addressed in this film, but like someone is gonna make that version of the film eventually, right? A24, get on it. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

10. Capote (2005)

Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection

No college genre lit course on true crime could be complete without Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and no eighth-grade English class could be complete without Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Turns out that the effeminate, gay New York socialite and the reclusive, Southern tough old bird were actually best friends who helped each other write their masterworks. In the film, Philip Seymour Hoffman (who won the Oscar) and Catherine Keener (who was nominated for one) play the literary duo as Capote investigates a set of brutal murders in Kansas that will become the basis for his iconic genre-creator. It's a beautiful story of an odd-couple friendship that makes you look around and say, "OK, which one of my writer friends is gonna help me get famous?" 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

11. Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

Carole Bethuel/IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

Every English major knows that a smaller, more powerful subsection of the English major is the literary drama enclave. These are not your "I'm auditioning for Oklahoma" group of theater kids who dress like cowgirls (because if you're not auditioning for Oklahoma, then why do you look like that?) but the "I'm doing dramaturgy work on a Uncle Vanya" group of theater academics. This is the film tailor-made for that group of English major elites. Juliette Binoche plays Maria Enders, an actor who became famous for playing the younger woman in a lesbian drama and is now returning to play the part of the older lover several decades later. It's a swirling tale of dramatic rivalry, aging, and taut homosexual eroticism. Both Binoche and Kristen Stewart, who plays her assistant (and should have been nominated for an Oscar for doing so) are exquisite in this cerebral drama for those aching for the high-minded dialogue and petty grievances of the world of theater. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

12. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Turning a novel into a film is largely the act of butchering a cow into a filet mignon. Turning a short story into a film is rather the act of raising the cow in the first place. Having read F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story on which this film is based, screenwriter Eric Roth (who got the Oscar nom) is doing all the heavy lifting. To take what is basically a thought exercise asking, "What would it be like to age backwards?" and transforming it into this lyrical epic is impressive. This lifelong romance between Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's characters is one for the ages. Be prepared to weep.

Watch it on Prime Video. 

13. The Hours (2002)

Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

If Harriet the Spy is the movie that creates English majors, The Hours is the film that cements them into place. To have any feelings for this film apart from deep abiding, melancholy adoration is unacceptable for anyone with a BA in lit. How does it stake itself so firmly as THE epitome of an English major? Let me (and Elizabeth Barrett Browning) count the ways: 

1. The entire film centers around Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, and one of the film's triptych of stories focuses on Woolf's (Nicole Kidman) writing of the classic novel. 

2. The film is adapted from The Hours by Michael Cunningham, a modern classic in and of itself that won the Pulitzer in 1999. 

3. Meryl Streep plays a book editor throwing a party. 

4. The party is for her friend, a poet (Ed Harris), who has won a prestigious literary prize but is dying of AIDS. 

5. Basically everyone in the movie is queer (Kidman, Streep, Harris, Julianne Moore, Allison Janney, Jeff Daniels), and if a census of my college's English department means anything, I think a hefty chunk of English majors are queer. 

Also, it should be noted that Toni Collette is breathtaking in her one scene. Like some of the finest acting of our generation. Mrs. Collette said she would steal the movie herself!

Watch it on HBO Max. 

14. Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Clay Enos/Sony Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection

For whatever reason, literary geniuses tend to attract one another. Thus is the case of course with the Bloomsbury Group, the Lost Generation, and the focus of this literary crime drama, the Beat Generation. While the film primarily focuses on poet Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), and his infatuation with classmate, and later editor, Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), we see their interactions with fellow members William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. As it begins with the two meeting in college, it has BIG English majors in the library vibes, and there is nothing more sensual than watching your crush read across a hefty oak table from you. And while an unrequited gay romance is of course standard university fare, the legal drama resulting in Carr's murder of a predatory janitor brings an added element of tension to the film. If only I could have helped my college love interest get away with murder. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

15. Life of Pi (2012)

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Another Man Booker Prize winner has entered the chat. In this Ang Lee 11-time Oscar nominated adaptation of the Yann Martel novel, a young Indian boy spends months adrift at sea in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The film is a masterclass in cinematography (for which it won the Oscar), as the solitary lifeboat lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean becomes a canvas for cinematic artistry. Aside from the "based-on-a-novel" aspect of the film, however, the story is centered around the act of creating a narrative, something that the Derrida and Foucault-reading Lit crit students will ponder indefinitely. As various versions of the tale unfold, it will leave you asking which is true, and (as your professor prompts) is there even truth at all? 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

16. Little Women (2019)

Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Writers love writing about writers, and English majors love to read books written by writers about writers writing. The 2019 Greta Gerwig adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott New England classic is certainly focused on writing. Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) is after all writing the story of her and her four sisters as the film progresses. Amy burns Jo's manuscript. We see the sisters acting out plays together. The whole thing screams ENGLISH MAJOR (as well as, "I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for.") To be an English major is to know your Hogwarts house (Slytherin), your favorite Jane Austen novel (Emma), and which March sister you are (Amy). So while picking your sister is subjective, the merits of this film as a part of the English major canon is not up for debate. If only I could send Louisa May Alcott a mold of my foot as a thank you. 

Rent it on Prime Video. 

17. The Green Knight (2021)

Eric Zachanowich/A24/Courtesy Everett Collection

The first paper I wrote in college was on The Green Knight, and not to brag, but I did get an A. Of course my Brit lit professor is probably somewhere in Newfoundland shaking her fist at this adaptation, which plays fast and loose with the 14th-century epic poem, but the cinematography (and Dev Patel) is beautiful to look at. We get the beheading, we get the quest, we get the (wet) green girdle, and while the plot points are a bit meandering, the movie goes all in on the Arthurian legend's mystic qualities. I would even go so far as to argue that the film's ending is more fitting to the tale than the original's. Now if only A24 would give me some reworkings of Margery Kempe or medieval spiritual plays (Quem Quaeritis!) 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

18. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

On an American literature syllabus primarily full of Puritans, flappers, and an old man chasing down a large marlin, Cormac McCarthy's novels stand out as needing a trigger warning. When we read Blood Meridian in my 20th-century American novel class, there was plenty ado about just how grisly and graphic it was. The same can be said for his 2005 novel adapted into the Coen brothers' Best Picture winner (which is also coincidentally the most recent major book adapted to win the top prize). Javier Bardem plays a ruthless serial killer/hitman, traveling around Texas searching for a missing stack of money and offing people along the way. It is not for those with a weak stomach, but the modern Western depicts McCarthy's bleak naturalism as the wild West chews up and spits out those not strong (and lucky) enough to last. 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

19. Easy A (2010)

Adam Taylor/Screen Gems/Courtesy Everett Collection

If there is one book that EVERY member of the American populace has read, one book to unify us across partisan lines, one book that has taught us all the word "scaffold," it is The Scarlet Letter. Sorry to Demi Moore, but I don't necessarily think that The Scarlet Letter is the best book to be turned into a movie (or the best book to force high schoolers to read if they're only going to read one). That being said, the LOOSE adaptation of it, Easy A, is a delight. Who needs Chillingworth, and Hester Prynne, and Pearl when you've got Emma Stone and Amanda Bynes? Perhaps not the most academic movie on the list, but one of the best options to watch drunkenly after you've turned in your term paper on Proust. 

Watch it on Hulu. 

20. Passing (2021)

Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

In last year's awards season, The Lost Daughter and Passing were a pair of twin films, oddly mirroring one another. Both were distributed by Netflix and provided their leading ladies with juicy Oscar-worthy roles. Both were directed by actors-turned-directors (Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Hall, who also shone in last year's The Night House). Both were adapted from literary works by female writers (Passing is based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen). Passing is, however, itself the story of two similar, but different, characters with Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga playing light-skinned childhood friends, one of whom is living as a Black woman while the other passes as white. The film is one of last year's best as the actors circle each other, inching closer and closer to a destruction that seems unavoidable (and oh so literary). 

Watch it on Netflix. 

21. Paterson (2016)

Mary Cybulski/Bleecker Street Media/Courtesy Everett Collection

I will say this after working in publishing for half a decade: There is no tougher, less lucrative arts field than poetry. We may study the crap out of it in college and take creative writing classes where we learn to write sonnets, but making a living off poetry is insanely difficult. It's best to just keep as a hobby. In Jim Jarmusch's Paterson (named after the William Carlos Williams poem), Adam Driver plays a driver (!) named Paterson (!) who writes poetry about people on his bus. His wife wants him to publish (good luck), but he is resistant. The sweet little film, however, is ultimately an encouraging message to do what you love (no matter what curmudgeonly BuzzFeed writers may tell you) and to follow your dreams as a writer (because who knows? They might come true!). We are due for another great sonnet writer after all. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

22. The Power of the Dog (2021)

Kirsty Griffin/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Someone at Netflix must REALLY be trawling through their local library for books to adapt, because here is yet another book-to-film adaptation from last year's Oscar race. This is also the second literary Jane Campion on the list, as she took a break from directing films between Bright Star and this, but she's back to pander to literature professors. This Western is based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage and follows a pair of brothers (Jesse Plemons and Benedict Cumberbatch) as they run a ranch in rural Montana. The plot itself is not particularly bookish, BUT to go back to my queer = English major theory, it does feel very "junior in a Faulkner seminar" to bathe with the handkerchief of your dead gay lover. Also "Bronco Henry" is only ever a name you could call a character in a book. 

Watch it on Netflix. 

23. Beloved (1998)

Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Move over, Reese Witherspoon — the OG celebrity book club queen was none other than Oprah. And Oprah was such a fan of Toni Morrison's novel about an ex-slave haunted by a poltergeist that she optioned the book for a film before the book had even landed its prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Oprah, of course, went on to star in the film version as well playing Sethe, one of the most iconic literary heroes in recent years. While the film did not fare well at the box office, I would argue that didn't speak to quality so much as a prickly, complex, important story that didn't lend itself to lazy filmgoers. Beloved is a book to be puzzled over, read, and interpreted again and again, and the movie functions similarly. A rewatch is always encouraged. 

Rent it on Prime Video. 

24. Reprise (2006)

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Along with Drive My Car, one of last year's International Feature nominees was Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World, the closer of his Oslo Trilogy (all of which star Anders Danielsen Lie) along with this film and Oslo, August 31st. Reprise follows a pair of young writers Phillip (Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Hoiner) as Phillip's first novel is published while Erik's is not. The film then follows their lives over the next several years as success and failure muddy the trajectories of both writers. Two paths diverged in a wood. We get to take both paths, and it turns out that one isn't necessarily any better than the other, as both lead deeper into the forest. 

Rent it on Prime Video. 

25. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

As with Jane Austen, you had to know that good ol' Billy Shakespeare would be popping up on this list eventually. Before we get to one of his play adaptations, however, let's stop down on the 1998 Best Picture winner about the Bard (Joseph Fiennes) falling in love with none other than Goop mogul Gwyneth Paltrow. We watched this SEVERAL times in college to learn just what the Globe theater looked like. "There were people standing in the mud." "Boys played the girls parts." "Shakespeare was like going to the movies." Is it as high brow and artistic as some of the other inclusions on this list? No. But is it a jolly good time in jolly ol' England? Most certainly. 

Watch it on Prime Video. 

26. The Shining (1980)

Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett Collection

While some English majors may poo poo Stephen King as being a low-brow genre writer, he is far and away the greatest horror writer of all time (an honor I would argue he's snatched away from Mr. Edgar Allan Poe). A perusal of On Writing will vouch for his dedication to the art of writing, and if you're brave enough (and have enough time) to read It, 11/22/63, or The Stand you'll see the sheer magnitude of his storytelling ability. King famously did not enjoy the Stanley Kubrick film version of his book about a writer losing his mind in a snowy secluded hotel, but you can't deny that both the book and the film are masterpieces. Also every English major has had a late-night writing about James Joyce that has nearly ended in them chasing a loved one around a hedge maze with an axe. #Relatable

Watch it on HBO Max. 

27. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

By this point, I hope you've realized that this list is essentially just the syllabus for when I eventually teach a seminar entitled "Queerness: A Journey from Page to Screen" at NYU. The Talented Mr. Ripley will be the keystone text in my course as it tells the story of a repressed nerdy gay man, in love with his best friend, and driven to all manner of con-man tactics and violence when that love isn't reciprocated. Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, the thriller stars a very hot cast who gallivant around the Italian countryside, proving that sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. I could, however, write a thousand words about Jude Law's knit, short-sleeve button-downs in this movie. Ma'am. 

Watch it on Peacock. 

28. Never Let Me Go (2010)

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

UGH! I love this movie so, so much! The English major in me cannot help but beat-poet finger snap whenever I think about this perfect adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro's dystopian romance. The casting of Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield as a love triangle of teenagers destined for tragedy is superb, and to watch Garfield's Tommy vacillate between the two women in the desperate hope of saving his own life will leave you weeping. (But in a beautiful, finishing-a-novel way and not in a watching-babies-being-eaten kind of way.) Watch it for the score, for Carey Mulligan's sad mouth, for the way British people say "complete," for everyone's massive mops of hair, and for an Andrew Garfield performance so good, you'll enjoy it stabbing you in the gut. When Nicole Kidman said, "Heartbreak feels good in a place like this," she was talking about the AMC theater screening Never Let Me Go.

Watch it on Hulu. 

29. Tick, Tick...Boom! (2021)

Macall Polay/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Speaking of Andrew Garfield...

This a movie based on a musical based on songs based on the life of a writer writing a different musical that didn't pan out before he wrote another musical about a writer that did become a Broadway hit. It's all very meta, but isn't that what literature is after all? A bunch of writers reading books by writers about writers (many of whom are gay)? Garfield stars in Lin-Manuel Miranda's directorial debut, a semi-autobiographical musical about Jonathan Larson, the playwright of Rent who died tragically young. The film follows Larson (Garfield) and his friends as they struggle to live life (bo, bo, bo, bo, bo) and make art as the AIDS crisis ravages New York City. Garfield (who learned to sing specifically for the role), Alexandra Shipp, and (dare I say it) Vanessa Hudgens all deliver wonderful performances, but it is Robin de Jesus who steals the show as Jonathan's gay bestie unraveling as the world crumbles around him. An LGBTQ+ Oscar-worthy musical that will leave you humming "Louder Than Words" until Labor Day? Johnny can decide, and he says "yes."

Watch it on Netflix. 

30. The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

A24/Courtesy Everett Collection

To be an English major is to take at least one Shakespeare class that involves watching a dozen Shakespeare film adaptations, most of which are old and dull (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Taylor in The Taming of the Shrew). Thankfully Joel Coen has saved us all the fate of having to watch Orson Welles play the Scot with his new black-and-white rendition starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. But even up against multi-Oscar winners like these, it is Kathryn Hunter as the witches who steals the show with her contortionist skills. It should also be noted that this is YET ANOTHER literary entry into last year's Oscar race. It doesn't have much of a queer narrative, BUT I would love to see someone gender swap Lady Macbeth into a power-hungry gay or Macbeth into a butch lesbian ready to kill for her wife. 

Watch it on Apple TV+. 

31. Wit (2001)

HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection

If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two. And the "they" here would be an English major and a John Donne poem. And if you are looking for a watchable film revolving around the work of the 1500s' favorite metaphysical poet, this is really your only option. This Mike Nichols-directed film is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson about a dying literature professor who happens to be an expert on Donne's Holy Sonnets. (Batter my heart, amirite?) Emma Thompson gives a brutal, raw, mesmerizing performance that could have landed her an Oscar nomination had it not been released on HBO. Watching it may not make Death proud (though some have called him mighty and dreadful), but it will certainly make your Brit lit professor well pleased. 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

32. You've Got Mail (1998)

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

The perfect film to close out this list! Nora Ephron's rom-com about rival bookstore owners who meet online and fall in love by exchanging emails provides a blueprint for the only way that an English major should ever fall in love (unless of course you're writing your number in a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and hoping it serendipitously finds its way into the hands of the right person). Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) knows all about the Shoe books and loves school supplies. She's dating a typewriter-obsessed newspaper writer. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) owns a chain of big bookstores and is pondering whether Mr. Darcy was prideful or prejudiced. He's dating a book editor. But Kathleen and Joe are meant to be together the same way any English major is meant to be with a large cup of coffee and a copy of Great Expectations. Literary love. What else is there to aspire to? (Aside from of course a party where you get to carve your own turkey.) 

Watch it on HBO Max. 

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