15 Of The Best Sunday Movies (And Where To Watch Them)

Great movies for a Sunday afternoon, according to Ali Plumb

It’s Sunday afternoon and you want something comforting, reliable and undeniably excellent to watch - only it’d be handy if it wasn’t the end of the world if you got up half-way through to make a cup of tea, or texted your friend back.

Time then, for a “rainy day movie” - a motion picture you know and love so much it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a great big hug of a film, the kind of classic that’s stood the test of time and regular repeats on terrestrial telly over Easter, Christmas and, well, any Sunday you care to mention.

Here are 15 of my favourites, with certain painful omissions, such as Matilda, Hook, Lawrence Of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, all of the Bonds, all of the Disney animated classics, the Pixars and many, many more. You’ll have your own family traditions, but these are some of ours!

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Length: 2 hours 22 minutes

Fun fact: There was no actual ball during the table tennis matches - sad to say - with a CGI one put in during post production, leaving the actors free to mime the most elaborate games possible.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Fun fact: Michael Caine couldn’t actually drive when the film was being shot, so you never actually see him driving a car. Either he’s a passenger, or when he’s ‘driving’ the Aston Martin, you never actually see him behind the wheel, and when he gets out, it’s after a handy cut.

Where to watch: Disney+ / Star

Length: 2 hours 55 minutes

Fun fact: Julie Andrews’ stumble during the song ‘I Have Confidence’ was entirely accidental but director Robert Wise thought the trip was a perfect way of reflecting Maria’s nervous character in that moment.

Where to watch: Netflix

Length: 2 hours 53 minutes

Fun fact: Steve McQueen did all his own on-screen motorcycle riding, aside from one moment: the border fence jump, which he was unable to carry out safely. In stepped his personal friend (and motorcycle shop owner) Bud Ekins, who also worked with McQueen on Bullitt a few years later.

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky Cinema

Length: Raiders - 1 hour 55 minutes, Temple - 1 hour 58 minutes, Crusade - 2 hours 8 minutes

Fun fact: The famous line in Raiders - "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage" - as said by Indy to Marion when they are on the ship was actually Harrison Ford’s own, ad-libbed on set.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Length: 2 hours 8 minutes

Fun fact: The ‘dilophosaurus’ we see spitting poison at Nedry in the rain, its head fans on full display’ was in actual fact “made up” by director Steven Spielberg. The real dinosaur didn’t spit venom or hood like a cobra - and you can see Spielberg himself talking about it in his Movies That Made Me interview on iPlayer whenever you like!

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky Cinema

Length: 1 hour 56 minutes

Fun fact: In France, 1995 Marty McFly is called "Pierre Cardin" instead of "Calvin Klein", while in Space, Marty is called "Levi Strauss".

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Length: 1 hour 38 minutes

Fun fact: "Dread Pirate Roberts" was a real person, an 18th century Caribbean buccaneer. He was also known as Bartholomew Roberts, as well as “Black Bart”, and of course has nothing really to do with the Princess Bride story at all.

Where to watch: BBC iPlayer

Length: 1 hour 48 minutes

Fun fact: This beloved Powell and Pressburger classic has is the personal favourite of the likes of J.K. Rowling and Michael Sheen. It’s famous, in part, for the huge escalator that linked this world to the next - a serious engineering achievement considering there were 106 steps, each 20 feet wide, all powered by a 21 horsepower engine, and it had to be constructed in under three months.

Where to watch: Disney+

Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

Fun fact: Keira Knightley was just 18 years old in 2003 - which means she was 17 when it was shot. The same is true for Love Actually, another Knightley movie that came out in 2003.

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky Cinema

Length (non extended): Fellowship - 2 hours 58 minutes, Towers - 2 hours 59 minutes, King - 3 hours 21 minutes

Fun fact: When Ian McKellen bashes his head against a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole, that was not intentional. Director Peter Jackson loved how McKellen stayed in character as Gandalf despite the accident and decided to keep it in.

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky Cinema

Length: 1 hour 51 minutes

Fun fact: Famously, most of the cast were in their 20s during production, despite playing high schoolers - Olivia Newton-John was 28 for example. Some however were actually in their 30s, such as Stockard Channing, who was 33 at the time, whilst Michael Tucci (Sonny) was 31 and Jamie Donnelly (Jan) was 30 on the nose.

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky

Length: 1 hour 55 minutes

Fun fact: Sean Astin (Mikey) tells a story of being given the treasure map as a memento, only to discover years later that his mother had found it one day, thought it was a piece of rubbish and threw it away.

Where to watch: NowTV / Sky

Length: 2 hours 22 minutes

Fun fact: The Andy Dufresne role (played by Tim Robbins in the finished product) was meant to be played by Tom Hanks, who couldn’t make his schedule work due to his obligations to Forrest Gump. As if to make up for this, he did appear in director Frank Darabont’s follow-up, The Green Mile, another Stephen King adaptation that just so happens to be set in a prison.

Where to watch: Netflix and Amazon Prime Video

Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Fun fact: In order to create the chocolate river, the production crew used real chocolate, cream and over 150,000 gallons of water. The trouble was, come the end of the shoot the concoction had started to turn and smelled awful, turning your childhood dream of neverending chocolate into somewhat of a nightmare.