Six Movies to Get You in the Fall Mood

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September has arrived, bringing the first hints of fall: cooler days, changing leaves, and the urge to revisit comfort watches.

Below, The Atlantic ’s writers and editors recommend six films that put them in an autumn spirit.

When Harry Met Sally (streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV) There’s the cornucopia of cable-knit sweaters, a chocolate-brown velvet bowler hat, the fog of bright-orange leaves streaming through the glass wall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Autumn in New York is the backdrop of When Harry Met Sally , but that doesn’t fully account for the place that Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner’s classic occupies in my life: For me, it’s the chicken noodle soup of movies.

I have my personal reasons for considering it the ultimate comfort watch.

Maybe it’s my affinity with Sally (played by Meg Ryan), the curly-haired journalist determined to have life happen to her, though her job is to “write about things that happen to other people.” Or the movie’s love for my hometown, which forms the bedrock of so many of Ephron’s films.

Or the weirdly specific fantasy of having your date unwittingly quote to you something you wrote in a magazine .

This time of year, I’m far from the only person who considers a When Harry Met Sally rewatch as inevitable as digging my denim jacket out of the back of my closet.

If there’s a universal magic to the movie, maybe some of it comes from magic in real life.

The original script saw Sally and Harry’s (Billy Crystal) story ending bittersweetly, with the two apart.

But midway through making the film, Reiner fell in love with his wife, Michele Singer.

This fall—our first without Reiner and Singer —I’ll be revisiting the movie in large part for the ending he decided on instead: perhaps the most memorable, and certainly my favorite, in the romantic-comedy genre. — Marie-Rose Sheinerman, assistant editor *** Michael Clayton (streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV) Fall is not really about melancholy and the inner life, as the poets would have you believe.