What films represent us most? Those that recreate history? Reimagine history? Biopics of American icons or stories made by Hollywood legends? With the United States celebrating 250 years this July 4th, we asked our team members to name a few films that they feel should be included in the canon of ‘American Movies Not to Miss.’
Jaws (1975)
What better film to represent America than the one that created the summer blockbuster? A 27-year-old Steven Spielberg etched his name in history with a film adaptation so thrilling that it makes you rethink getting into the water. Jaws also forever changed how we approach film releases, marketing, distribution tactics, and how suspense is built on-screen. Set against the backdrop of a picturesque New England beach town on the Fourth of July weekend, a monstrous shark stalks the shore, killing all it can. Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) is tasked with protecting the town as the attacks begin, clashing with an idiotic symbol of capitalism in the town’s mayor (Murray Hamilton), who refuses to shut down the beaches. To catch the beast, Brody joins forces with marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and expert shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw).
Jaws is a testament to the expertise of a young, confident Spielberg and the people who allowed him to create such a culture-shifting film – an amalgamation of the American Dream. Its presence in the zeitgeist endures through endless references and in the inspiration of contemporary filmmakers. Hearing that infamous ‘dun dun’ still gives me chills.
(Courtesy of Mariana Fabian)
Showgirls (1995)
Sometimes, to truly capture the American spirit, you have to be on the outside looking in; nobody understands this more than Paul Verhoeven. While a significant portion of his filmography is dedicated to satirizing parts of American monoculture, notably RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997), both taking shots at the flashy presentation of the military-industrial complex, none truly captures the myth of the American dream quite like Showgirls.
Even though it was reviled upon release and remains controversial today, the rags-to-riches story of Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkeley) shows that the promise of fame and fortune is really just a gilded cage that rots everyone who gets sucked in. It’s also the first and only NC-17 film to garner a wide release, which is pretty monumental in Hollywood’s notoriously (and some may say continuously) conservative history. We love the drama, we love the eroticism, and we love the excess of showbiz.
(Courtesy of Red Broadwell)
Dazed and Confused (1993)
Nothing quite captures the American feeling of freedom more than being a teenager on the last day of school. Set on a hot summer day in June 1976, right on the heels of America’s bicentennial, Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age masterpiece is about more than high school, parties, and pot. It’s about making the most of the time you’re truly free.
There’s a scene in the film in which characters compare different decades and ponder what the 1980s might be like when they’re in their 20s, when “it can’t get any worse.” Regardless of what America’s past was or what its future could be, every generation has the universal experience of being young and feeling like you can take on the world. Whether it’s only for one night or a whole summer, it doesn’t matter. Dazed and Confused captures what it’s like to be young, to be free, to be an American. It doesn’t get better than that.
(Courtesy of Evan Miller)
Strange Days (1995)
Perhaps I am biased, as this is one of my personal favorite films, but Strange Days captures the personality of a unique era in the United States while remaining relevant and universal. Following a former policeman, Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), who now works in the illegal sale of virtual-reality-like recordings, the use and weaponization of technology feels as present in 1995 USA as they do today. A recording, which captures a significant event between the Black Community and the LA police force, takes Lenny on a crime-thriller adventure alongside American icon Angela Bassett. The film toys with the themes of corruption, power, racial tensions, and technology as an escape and a weapon — all of which speak to both the current and past state of the United States with the rise of AI. And after the powerful Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020, marked by the killing of George Floyd, caught and publicized by a bystander cell-phone video, the tensions between the Black community and the local police force are all too familiar.
The film is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the first female filmmaker to win Best Director, and was penned by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, filmmakers and writers responsible for many other iconic American films, from Titanic (1997) to Gangs of New York (2002).
(Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas)
The Florida Project (2017)
Few contemporary filmmakers investigate the harsh realities of American capitalism as Sean Baker does in The Florida Project. His intimate depiction of class division and poverty in Orlando, Florida owes much of its profundity to its youthful perspective, which situates the viewer in an incredibly colorful, innocent, and complicated world. What is more American than families struggling to afford groceries a mile down the road from a place built entirely around selling dreams? What is poverty to a child? How do children make sense of a world they did not create? The Florida Project asks this and many other interesting questions about modern American life and is anchored by some incredibly moving performances from Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe, and Bria Vinaite.
(Courtesy of Jake Fittipaldi)
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Oh, Spike Lee, the director you are. Out of all the films I could’ve picked to include in this list, you’ll be hard-pressed to make me pick any other than my first-ever Lee film, discovered way back in college. Based on a true story about a Black Colorado police officer who successfully infiltrates the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white Jewish colleague, I never would have imagined a true story related to the Klan to be so damn funny and entertaining.
John David Washington expertly plays Ron Stallworth, the police officer who successfully becomes a part of the local branch of the KKK. Like all Lee films, the story is interesting; the film pays tribute to artists and filmmakers; it’s stylized; and it maintains constant tension up to the final shot. There’s no preaching about why the organization is heinous, nor does it dwell on the exploitation of showing violent images. Rather, the film’s tight script focuses on the characters and their implications, making audiences aware of a unique piece of history — with a Spike Lee signature twist.
(Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas)
Gilda (1946)
As an avid film noir defender, I felt compelled to ensure at least one iconic black-and-white picture made it into our watchlist. “There never was a woman like Gilda.” Or really, never a woman like the beautiful Rita Hayworth. The iconic American actress dances, sings, and leads this delicious noir, where a small-time gambler (Glenn Ford) hired to work in a Buenos Aires casino discovers his employer’s new wife is his former lover. A unique genre of the American 1940s, film noir continues to inspire filmmakers and cinematographers with its distinctive lines coming through the blinds, chiaroscuro, anti-heroes, and its ability to mercilessly call out capitalism and American greed. But of course, Gilda is also playful, with Hayworth and Ford’s romantic and sexual tension making this film also a bit of a toxic love story. Love Island, who? This is juicier.
(Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas)
The Irishman (2019)
In a pantheon of masterpieces, no film from maestro Martin Scorsese has ever felt as painfully melancholic and nostalgically somber about the mysticism of America’s ethereal figures as The Irishman. At a staggering 209 minutes, Scorsese patiently traverses a richly corrupt tapestry of forgotten history told by a dying hitman, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who recounts how he coincidentally brushed up against the most seismic political and criminal organizations of the 20th century. Call it grasping for a faint relevancy, as he intercuts between tangential storylines and a barrage of semi-related historical crime figures. Or it’s his way of acknowledging that his memories matter. The faded memory of a bygone, seedy America rests within those who are left to collect dust, if they aren’t killed by other hitmen, of course. Scorsese reflects the notarized myth-making that’s haunted the decaying pillars of the Teamsters Union, Philadelphia mobsters, corrupt political deals, the Kennedys, and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Above all else, the obedient loyalty of these steadfast men strings along decades of events and death that pitifully feel inconsequential and minuscule.
Beautifully photographed like an unearthed family album; briskly edited with the precision of a surgeon by legendary Thelma Schoonmaker; and extraordinarily acted with the gravitas, vulnerability, and unexpected nuance of its leads, The Irishman encapsulates the pained loyalty and bitter resentment of America’s most sinfully humorous perplexities. The same complexities that have fortified the bedrock of America’s forward momentum are reducing corrupt dealings and public assassinations to content fodder.
(Courtesy of Paul Rai)
Shrek (2001) and The Dark Knight (2008)
In my opinion, both movies signify the nation’s openness to diverse categories and the Academy’s recognition that it needs to expand its Oscar ballot. The superhero genre and computer-generated animation found their rightful place in the awards conversation. Together, they show how American popular cinema can reshape the institutions that judge it. Even more so, Shrek and The Dark Knight, although entirely different, represent much of American pop culture, including some of the most iconic characters ever put to screen.
(Courtesy of Madiha Ali)
Pain & Gain (2013)
What are some of America’s core values? Hard work and determination? The notion of a meritocracy awarding you success in the land of opportunity? Or is it that you’re owed success, and that sense of entitlement is a virtue? That garish, abhorrent belief is on full display in Michael Bay’s wicked black comedic satire, Pain and Gain. The film is based on the true story of the Sun Gym Gang, where a group of bodybuilders kidnapped, extorted, and tortured a wealthy businessman and murdered two others in Miami, Florida, in the mid-1990s. It’s a story so horrific and ugly that somehow Bay and his gonzo, hyperstylized nature manage to make a scathing indictment of American exceptionalism. It’s an ethos that has bred delusions of grandeur so pervasive that you can take what you want without consequences. Bay also magnificently foretells the era of Trump politics and the online masculine male energy that’s dominated our culture in the last few years.
Bay paints a glossy, sweltering, and absurdly hilarious picture of male insecurity breeding a sociopathy manifested in craven, muscle-bound, macho gym bros committing acts of crime because they’re deserving of someone’s wealth. “I don’t just want everything you have… I want you not to have it,’ a determined Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) tells the face of a bound and gagged businessman. If you believe you’re better than everyone, what’s to stop you from kidnapping someone dressed as a ninja? Or injecting horse tranquilizer into a witness before she dies? Or burning their hands on a barbecue grill to get rid of fingerprints?
Pain and Gain is a film that may offend every sensibility in your body, yet there’s no hint of dishonesty or glibness. It’s earnest in its satirization of American entitlement. The film is ridiculously funny in showing the stupidly incompetent depths of a few bodybuilders achieving the American Dream. In the words of Daniel himself, “If you’re willing to do the work, you can have anything. That’s what makes the U.S. of A great.”
(Courtesy of Paul Rai)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
One of the most beautiful, understated aspects of America is its largeness. It’s a giant land mass almost worth getting lost in to discover unassuming pockets of people. One of those pockets is the rural, dilapidated area of a Texas town, as five teenagers traverse the serene, fetching countryside. The idyllic summer vibes and blissful ignorance come at the cost of running a cannibalistic family amok and a lumbering giant wearing people’s faces as masks, wielding a chainsaw as he chases you like a determined predator. Tobe Hooper’s American masterpiece, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is unlike any film in the horror genre, yet is a perfect synthesis of both the beauty and unfounded horror of being in America. Inspired by the ghoulish Ed Gein murders of Wisconsin, Hooper plunges the viewer into an unrelenting nightmare that goes beyond visceral thrills.
The foreground is riddled with crazed psychopaths, sofas composed of human bones, and the most deranged dinner scene in cinematic history, freshly stocked with the most rancid, foul-smelling human meat. Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl paint the picturesque backdrop with degrading townships, slaughterhouses that’ve pushed mallet bashers out of work, and fringe families becoming macabre survivalists. The images look and feel roughly textured like lost footage, something no one should see — a snuff film uncovered from an evidence locker room. American values and prosperity have no place in the lawless terrain where the counter-culture revolution has lost; the forgotten rural South can consume teens, pushed out by the industrial age of the 70s. The institutions of modernist society can’t save you from being placed on a meat hook. The rise of corporate America in the South can’t prevent you from a decrepit, decaying grandpa figure sucking blood out of your cut finger. The societal breakdown is as American as apple pie.
The raw, pulsating adrenaline electrifying every frame of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has made it an enduring masterwork of assaultive filmmaking and invigorated the horror genre, sustaining a symbolic icon such as Leatherface in American mythology.
(Courtesy of Paul Rai)
The Birdcage (1996)
In the midst of conservative politicians’ war against the Queer community in the United States (from bathroom bans to attacks on gay marriage to the demonization of trans athletes), it’s tough to find a film that can poke fun at the increasingly negative views in the US. Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage takes some of America’s most iconic actors and plays with the clash between conservative and liberal America in a lighthearted family comedy.
Armand Goldman (Robin Williams) owns a drag nightclub and lives above it with his longtime partner Albert (Nathan Lane). When Armand’s son announces he’s getting married to a right-wing senator’s daughter, the family decides the best course of action is for Albert to play a woman. With drag, gags, and Robin Williams’ undeniable comedic charm, The Birdcage is a hoot and a holler from start to finish with love, understanding, and family at its heart. Gene Hackman plays opposite Williams and Lane as Senator Keeley, perfectly matching their quick wit and ad-libbed moments, reminding everyone why he was one of the greats in American cinema.
Perhaps due to its era, the film feels like we are looking at serious issues in American politics through rose-colored glasses. Maybe all can be fixed if more people dress in drag and sing “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. However, the kindness and openness in the film only lend themselves to remind Americans of the strength of love, openness, and a really good wig.
(Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
One of those incisive and biting films of the 20th century that has become more relevant and prescient with each passing year is Spike Lee’s audacious Do the Right Thing. A fiery, incendiary film stripping away the racial and societal tensions on one hot, humid, and thick day in Bed-Stuy, as various races of the block become embroiled in a heated, intense, and calamitous microcosm of America. Lee plays Mookie, the center of this ensemble of characters that includes Italian pizza makers, wise elders perched on their stoops, a showman DJ radio host, and an animated friend of Mookie who takes issue with the lack of Black celebrities at Sal’s Pizzeria. This breakdown of communication fuels the heartbreaking catharsis of how much raw anger is necessary to recognize the systemic racism laden in even the most good-faith institutions.
Racial injustice is intertwined in America’s foundations, and Lee has never been an artist to back down from unraveling the ugly, uncomfortable layers of racial disparity that civilized America would choose to ignore…until it blows up in its face. One such sequence is a literal in-your-face confrontation, as characters break the fourth wall and unload a torrent of racial and stereotypical insults toward a racial group. As bitter and tragic as the culmination of Lee’s film can be, there is a hopeful projection of optimism that, in America, we’re constantly evolving. America is a young nation; progress has to break through concrete walls of calcified barriers before new attitudes acclimate.
Do the Right Thing is a pillar of American history and an important cinematic text, an uncompromising film that remains both entertaining and insightful. Like the jolt of energy exuded by Rosie Perez’s scorching opening dance to Bill Nunn’s Radio Raheem giving a lesson in love beating hate, Lee infuses his youthful, visionary exuberance to emphasize the somber, layered intelligence encasing this hotly fueled, monumental film.
(Courtesy of Paul Rai)
Watchlist Courtesy of The Rolling Tape Team