The 25 Most American Movies of All Time
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Anthony BreznicanThu, June 18, 2026 at 10:30 AM UTC
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The 25 Most American Movies of All TimeArt by Mike Kim (Art by Mike Kim)
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What are the top 25 most American movies? This is the question Esquire's editors posed to me as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. I pondered this with questions of my own: What makes a movie ā¦ American?
I compiled an array of titles that I thought spoke to who we are, what we strive to be, and where we fall short. Every movie on this list says something about America. I felt there should be some obvious classics, but didn't want it to be only the greatest hits. I looked for big movies and small movies, famous ones, and more obscure gems. I wanted comedy, some horror, a sports movie, a worker tale, some military stories, a president or two, movies set in cities, and others in different countrysides. It includes a mix of films that variously celebrate, critique, and honor America, sometimes all at once.
But I had other questions: Does it have to be only 25? The higher the number climbs, the easier it gets in terms of not having to make any hard decisions. Limiting the list guarantees that it is incomplete.
But hey, ā¦ America is incomplete too. We are, now and probably forever, a work in progress. So, I admit at the start that anyone could easily draft a rival list of 25 movies that should have been included. Think of this not as a definitive ranking, but merely one list of many possible options. I approached it like programming a film festival based around this theme.
America is also a nation of laws, right? So, I had to establish some of my own:
Rule #1: This is my list, written for Esquire but reflecting my own views, not the views of everyone who works there. Think of me as the man in the Norman Rockwell painting (who I'm pretty sure was also telling everyone about his list of top movies).
Rule #2: Only directors who are American citizens can be included. It's true that an outsider can sometimes see the subject with more clarity, like Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave or Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. In the end, I felt the "top 25 most American movies" should be directed by Americans. These are our stories about ourselves.
Rule #3: That's not the same as saying the filmmakers all had to be American-born. A naturalized citizen is an American. That's how Casablanca and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remains on the list even though director Michael Curtiz was born in Hungary and Frank Capra was born in Italy. This rule cost the list Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, which would be here if not for the fact that Chaplin was British and remained so throughout his time in Hollywood. Sorry, Charlie.
Rule #4: No director could be represented twice. I instituted this just for the sake of making room for more voices.
Rule #5: I looked beyond this current decade (which starts in 2021). Sinners and One Battle After Another are extraordinary movies about very American themes, but they also recently earned Oscars and dominated the box office, so they are fresh in the mind. I wanted to cast the spotlight beyond what has recently been right in front of us.
Now that I've explained my rationales, on to the list ā¦
I'm looking forward to the debate. This experiment will be made better by your critiques and counterproposals. By all means, make your own list as you try to answer the question that started all of this: What are the 25 most American movies?
That means something different to each person. Choose your own titles. Establish your own rules. It is, after all, a free country.
25. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dir. George A. Romero
"They're coming to get you, Barbara ā¦" This independently made masterpiece of modern horror took the monsters out of gothic castles and ancient woodlands and placed them in the heart of middle Americaāin this case, the outskirts of director George A. Romero's hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What vaults Night of the Living Dead onto this list of great American films is that, either intentionally or subconsciously, Romero used the zombie apocalypse to capture the besieged sensibility of American society at the end of the tumultuous 1960s.
On top of the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation during the height of the Cold War, everyday citizens were reeling from the assassination of JFK, the bloodbath of Vietnam, and the pushback of antiwar protests, as well as the much-overdue changes brought about by the civil rights movement, women's liberation, and the sexual revolution. It was a time of constant upheaval and uncertainty. The times were definitely a-changing, and Romero's use of news broadcasts to showcase the undead awakening called to mind every breaking news bulletin that had rocked the nation over the course of that decade.
Just months before Night of the Living Dead's debut, the murders of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy battered America's already fragile nerves. In his otherworldly horror story, Romero brought together a handful of disparate survivors and thrust them together in a single remote farmhouse as dread in the form of the slow-moving but unstoppable zombie horde fully engulfed them. Betrayals and conflicts arise between the survivors, and because they cannot live together they die one by one.
Most tragically, the movie's hero, the stalwart and resourceful Ben (played by Duane Jones), makes it through the night ā¦ only to be gunned down by a group of white men who see the Black survivor and assume he is a monster. It's not a subtle point Romero's making about America, but it remains powerful nonetheless, then as well as now.
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24. Winter's Bone (2010)
Dir. Debra Granik
In her breakthrough role, Jennifer Lawrence stars as teenage Ree, a girl from the sticks who's trying to hold her household together, caring for her ailing, catatonic mother, and tending to her two young siblings. They are people of the land, beyond impoverished, and their plight mirrors the struggle of many in the rural corners of America who often go unseen.
As the story begins, Ree can't feed both her workhorse and her brother and sister, so they hand off the animal (one of their few valuable possessions) to neighbors, unsure if they will ever get it back. That's just the backdrop for what becomes a harrowing thriller. This tale set in the woods and swamps of the Ozarks is actually a detective story.
It's based on Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel, and filmmaker Debra Granik delivers an unflinching depiction of American desperation. Ree must track down her absentee father, who has skipped out on his bail. If he doesn't show in court within a week, the family's meager home will be taken to cover the forfeiture. So, aided by her shady uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes), Ree sets off to find her dad, dead or alive. She brushes up against crooked cops, backwoods drug cartels, and a host of other dangers as she follows the missing man's trail. Winter's Bone is a testament to American resilience, as well as a moving portrait of the nation's countless have-nots.
One line stands out from early in the film, when Ree is watching with her little brother as the couple from a neighboring farm clean and gut a deer they've hunted. The boy suggests asking for some of the meat, and Ree delivers the cold message at the heart of Winter's Bone: "Never ask for what ought to be offered."
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23. 9 to 5 (1980)
Dir. Colin Higgins
You can't just read the title of this movieāyou automatically start singing it, backed by the upbeat tempo of a tapping typewriter. Almost a half-century later, this screwball comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton remains an evergreen satire of American working life, and its influence can be seen in everything from Office Space to Horrible Bosses and The Devil Wears Prada.
This holy trinity of actresses stars as women toiling as secretaries and administrators in a Manhattan skyscraper. They are underpaid, undervalued, and mistreated as a rule, but they are especially tormented by their sleazy, credit-stealing, sexually abusive boss, played by Dabney Coleman at his most despicable. 9 to 5 was making the point of #MeToo four decades before the hashtag. The trio fulfills the American dream to give their boss the comeuppance he deserves. While still punching the clock, they also find a clever way to hit back against him.
Some elements of the film are dated, but this reminder of a less enlightened time continues to underscore the disparity that continues to this day. A recent study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows women on average still earn only 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Director Colin Higgins co-wrote the script with screenwriter Patricia Resnick, and their story turns this unfairness into a searing satire that is both infuriating and satisfying. 9 to 5 gave new meaning to the notion of "getting even" in the American workplace.
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22. An American Tail (1986)
Dir. Don Bluth
"There are no cats in Ah-merrr-eee-caahhh!" This joyful song from the animated feature is sung by a family of mice, but it captures the boundless (and perhaps misguided) optimism of real-life immigrants who have ventured here from around the globe, hoping to escape violence, oppression, poverty, and persecution in their former homelands. The Mouskevitz family from Russia believes the streets are paved with cheese rather than gold, but the metaphor of this family film holds. There is great opportunity here, of course, but it is hardly easy and "cats" of all kinds remain.
There had to be an animated feature on this list of iconic American films, and while most of them are set in fairy tale kingdoms, alien worlds, or ancient times, this adventure set in the late 1800s is as authentic as a movie about singing mice can be. Like Art Spiegelman's iconic graphic novel Maus, which told the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of mice, director Don Bluth's animated musical upends the anti-Semitic trope of insulting Jews as rodents by showcasing the heart and humanity in his cast of little furry creatures.
The little boy of the Mouskevitz family, Fievel, becomes separated from his parents during the long and perilous journey to New York, and he unites with other immigrant mice from Italy and Ireland to find his way home in this new land. There are, of course, plenty of cats in America, but some of them turn out to be nice, such as Dom DeLuise's helpful Tiger. Fievel learns that people (or cats and mice) are not always what they seem, for good and ill. An American Tail suggests this may not be a land free of peril, but it does draw together those who share similar hopes, dreams, and values.
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21. Apollo 13 (1996)
Dir. Ron Howard
A testament to American ingenuity. Apollo 13 is not just a true-life tale from America's space exploration era, but it's the story of a time when everything went wrong. Still, there is triumph in the recovery.
The scramble to save the lives of this mission's astronauts, on the ground and in orbit, underscores the can-do spirit of a country that, in general, often sees things go hopelessly awry but never stops trying to set them right. In this specific case, a journey to the moon literally spins out of control for NASA explorers Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise (played by Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton). An electrical short causes an oxygen tank explosion, leading to Lovell's level-headed understatement: "Houston, we have a problem."
This incident happened in 1970, and director Ron Howard's 1996 retelling debuted at a time when America's space exploration had waned, and our culture was yearning for a bygone time when NASA became a unifying force for good across the globeāan example of the best America could be, for humanity in general. Even though the mission suffered a catastrophic failure, the astronauts were not lost.
The men themselves and their colleagues back on Earth worked tirelessly to problem-solve and piece together a life-saving return with ultra-limited resources. The team back on the ground included Gary Sinise's Ken Mattingly, a fellow astronaut who was almost sent up with the mission, and Ed Harris's Gene Kranz, a NASA aerospace engineer and head of the flight program, who delivered the film's other memorable line: "Failure is not an option."
When Apollo 13 debuted, then-president Bill Clinton praised the movie for reminding America of Kranz's true-life remark, which Clinton called "a statement of the national purpose we all need as we move toward a new century." That's still true now, as ever.
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20. Italianamerican
Dir. Martin Scorsese
There simply had to be a Scorsese film in this list. Virtually every film the New York native has made delves into the character of America. It begins with his 1967 short film The Big Shave, a grisly metaphor for the churn of casualties in Vietnam, in which a man can't stop shaving his face, digging the razor into the flesh until he is a bloody, mutilated mess. Mean Streets (1973) was a story about sins of all kinds in the working class neighborhood of New York where Scorsese grew up. Nearly two decades later, 1990's Goodfellas delved even deeper into the psyches of city dwellers who take what they want regardless of the rules. This theme arose again in 1995's Casino, 2002's Gangs of New York, his 2006 Oscar-winner The Departed, and once more in the white collar world of 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street.
Scorsese tells American storiesāof outcasts, wannabes, and striversābut makes them biblical. From 1976's Taxi Driver, to 1980's Raging Bull, 1982's The King of Comedy, 1991's Cape Fear, and 2019's The Irishman, the filmmaker has pulled on the all-too-thin thread that exists between right and wrong. It was never more clear than in his take on the real-life murder of Native Americans by oil-seeking opportunists in 2023's Killers of the Flower Moon. His stories are all different, but are linked by the notion of injustice, violence, and the thirst for power. Any one of these could have made this list, and you could probably create a rundown of 25 American movies based solely on his filmography.
Where did this filmmaker's sense of morality, humanity, and perseverance originate? You can find one answer here in Italianamerican, the filmmaker's 1974 documentary about his parents, Charlie and Kelly Scorsese. They recount their family history, their struggles as the New York-born children of immigrants from Sicily, the poverty and hardship they overcame, and even their feelings about the different kinds of theft, taking what you want vs. taking what you need.
In addition to this uplifting and emotional story of American self-determination, you get a window into the mind and heart of one of the country's greatest filmmakers. On top of it all, Scorsese details his mom's pasta sauce recipe in the credits.
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19. Stagecoach (1939)
Dir. John Ford
Not only is this a story about a cross-section of America's social classes, but the silvery cinematography of Bert Glennon gave the world a monochromatic sense of what it's like to ride through the majestic sandstone columns of Monument Valley. John Ford knew the western landscape and took moviegoers along for the ride.
There is a lot that's dated about Stagecoach, but the story focused on misfits and outcasts redeems it. They are all on an ill-advised, 200-mile journey from central Arizona territory to Lordsburg, New Mexico. (The fact that they get there by detouring 300 miles north to the Utah border is, well ā¦ part of what makes this a fairy tale more than anything.)
The coach is driven by comic relief character actor Andy Devine, whose warbly delivery welcomes all. John Wayne is an outlaw named Ringo who is picked up along the way, and the other passengers include alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell, a.k.a. Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life,) a cast-out prostitute named Dallas (Key Largo Oscar-winner Claire Trevor,) a gentleman gambler Hatfield (John Carradine) and embezzling banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill,) who is carrying a valise full of stolen cash. They're mostly disreputable scoundrels, apart from virtuous Lucy (Louise Platt), a pregnant woman who's traveling to meet her husband at his U.S. cavalry outpost.
Like Night of the Living Dead, the passengers of Stagecoach find they must rely on each other, rise above expectations, and find their own sense of selflessness and nobility in order to survive. The threat they face is hostile Apaches, led by the unseen Geronimo, and Ford doesn't bother to blur the black-and-white narrative of good vs. evil by exploring the decimation and violence that led these Indians to view a wagon full of white settlers as a threat.
But there is one nod to the movie's overall theme that comes when the passengers meet an innkeeper (Chris-Pin Martin) and are appalled by his "savage" wife. The innkeeper then gives voice to the notion that surviving means finding a way to live in harmony: "Maybe not so bad to have an Apache wife. Apache don't bother me, I think."
Another quality that makes Stagecoach exceptional is the breathtaking stuntwork overseen by legendary daredevil Yakima Canutt, whose fall beneath the stamping hooves of the horses and the wheels of the wagon was imitated decades later in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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18. Boyz n the Hood (1991)
Dir. John Singleton
Often thought of as a landmark crime saga, Boyz n the Hood is actually a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, set in South Central L.A. amid an epidemic of gang violence that ended too many young lives before they could even really begin. Few films are as powerful as this drama, which earned 23-year-old John Singleton Oscar nominations for director and original screenplay.
Echoing another unforgettable American story of growing up, Stand By Me, Boyz n the Hood begins with a prologue in which four boys find a dead body along some railroad tracks. This is a murder victim, however, not an accident. When the story flashes forward, the boys are grown up, they are young men, but the prospect of becoming old men seems out of reach. The possibility of dying in the crossfire of warring gangs seems far too likely.
Tre, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., hopes to escape the poverty of South Central by going to college. Ice Cube's Doughboy has already done time for dealing drugs, and is already too deep in the Crips to escape. Morris Chestnut's Ricky is a high school football star with NFL aspirations, and Redge Green's Chris has already been paralyzed by a gunshot wound.
The characters all have agency. The choices they make determine their fates, but there are also forces at work beyond their control. Drugs, poverty, racism and desperation surround them. Some choose violence to survive, others seek a more legitimate escape. Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne play Tre's separated parents, trying to steer their boy away from trouble and into a happily ever after.
Ice Cube's tragic Doughboy laments why no one seems to care about the lives of people in their neighborhood, but Boyz n the Hood made people care. Singleton's story still carries immense power, looking with mercy upon those that others would rather not see.
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17. Eight Men Out (1988)
Dir. John Sayles
"Say it ain't so, Joe." Did a brokenhearted kid really say this to "Shoeless" Joe Jackson? The prevailing wisdom is that it was a legend made up by journalists to underscore the citywide disaffection after it was revealed that Jackson and other ballplayers on the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series after being paid off by gamblers.
Writer-director John Sayles brings this perhaps apocryphal moment to life, and even if it didn't really happen, there's something true about the sentiment. Americans look to sports for honesty. There are winners and losers, and there is achievement that plays out in front of live, cheering audiences. The fact that some of it could be a fraud ā¦ that's just too much to bear.
Films like Hoosiers, Rudy, Rocky, Creed, and Friday Night Lights strike a nerve not because the central characters always win (they don't), but because they try. What Sayles captures in this period baseball drama is the injustice of how the players were treated, how that drove them into the arms of crooks and hoodlums. You sympathize with them, but still feel disappointed.
What happened to these athletes was wrong, but they made it worse by choosing the path of a quick buck over their own honor. That "Say it ain't so" kid may not have existed, but there were countless others out there who did, and their faith in their heroes had value that no numbers-runners could hope to tally.
Eight Men Out is a great American film because it says integrity matters. Honesty matters. Fairness matters. Without them, winning doesn't.
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16. Idiocracy (2006)
Dir. Mike Judge
American taxpayers just spent $60 million to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship brawl on the White House lawn for the president's birthday party. Who could have guessed when Idiocracy debuted 20 years ago that it would someday seem like a documentary?
There are many films in this list that look upon America with admiration, but this one is here to raise an ice-cold glass of Brawndo ("The Thirst Mutilator") in honor of our abject stupidity.
Let's face it. There is a devastating part of American society that only wants the easy way. We can be manipulated by our lowest impulses, swayed by noise over substance, and ignore our own needs and well-being simply because doing things the right way is often difficult. See our crumbling infrastructure, worthless but costly health-care system, and utterly paralyzed government as exhibits A, B, and C.
Luke Wilson stars in this satire as a run-of-the-mill guy who finds himself in a future where dipshits rule. He's no genius, but he has common sense. Director and co-writer Mike Judge has respect for everyday people, as evidenced by his animated series King of the Hill, but his bullshit meter cannot be denied. In Idiocracy, he used it to zero in on the motherload of anti-intellectualism that all too often holds this nation back.
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15. Minari (2020)
Dir. Lee Isaac Chung
This semi-autobiographical drama from writer-director Lee Isaac Chung is about as inspiring and optimistic as an American film can be. Chung was born in Colorado to immigrant parents from South Korea, and the family moved to a farm in Arkansas when he was a boy. That mirrors the tale he tells in Minari about the Yi family. Mom and Dad (Yeri Han and Steven Yeun) face hardship as they move their young children to this rural outpost and try to work the land. Their American dream is to grow vegetables from their old homeland for Asian restaurants frequented by fellow citizens from their new country.
The title Minari refers to the vine seeds that the family's no-nonsense grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung, who won an Oscar for the role) brings from Korea to plant along a creekside. Soon, it thrives. So does the Yi family, although not without help.
Will Patton co-stars as Paul, a scruffy, good ol' boy from the Deep South, who often lugs a giant cross down the back roads to demonstrate his Pentecostal devotion to Jesus Christ. You'd expect this unusual figure to become the villain of the story, a closed-minded sonofabitch who looks upon his new Asian neighbors with prejudice and scorn. But he really does buy into his faith. He's there to help, and he guides the Yi family toward tapping a well on their property and gives them useful tips about growing in this unfamiliar land.
Paul is kind to the Yi family, and they are kind in return, although Yeun's father character is skeptical. Ultimately, they welcome each other's friendship. Paul marvels at their exotic (to him) cuisine. They marvel back at his eccentricities and quirks.
All of this was taken from real life, which is why Chung's film remains such a powerful testament to the American immigrant experience and the way this patchwork nation is composed of many different fabrics, all holding together as one.
Minari will make you cry happy tears. It represents the very best we can be.
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14. Patton (1970)
Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner
If you watch Patton on a big screen in a movie theater, George C. Scott's U.S. Army general appears to be life-sized, standing there in front of you before a floor-to-ceiling American flag. The audience becomes the assembled soldiers, beholding their leader's rousing, belligerent, profane speech. "Now, I want you to remember," he begins, "that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."
The real-life World War II general, nicknamed "Old Blood-and-Guts," was a divisive figure. He was temperamental, headstrong, and egotistical. But he also drove the U.S. Army across occupied Europe with a speed and lethal efficiency that few other military strategists could hope to muster. Did he need to be such a bastard himself? That's the question the movie, and Scott's mesmerizing performance, persist in asking.
Maybe. He was a singular kind of American, although by no means did he win the war all by himself. Karl Malden's Gen. Omar Bradley is more beloved by the troops, more nimble as a diplomat, and more effective as a unifier helping guide the Allied forces to victory over Nazi Germany. But he needed a bulldozer to deal with Hitler's Third Reich, and that was Patton.
Scott won the Oscar for this role, but famously refused to attend the Academy Awards ceremony to accept it. That bullheadedness is admirable. It mirrors Patton's own stubbornness, and there's something to admire in that integrity despite the military man's other personal and professional flaws.
Patton, co-written by future Godfather filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, is a vital American film because it distills our nation's overwhelming complexity into one man. Patton was a living weapon, built for war. And weapons can harm as well as protect. The opening of the movie was designed to make it seem like he is standing before us, but he remains larger than life.
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13. Lincoln (2012)
Dir. Steven Spielberg
In Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis delivers one of the most transformative performances ever captured on film. It doesn't seem like we're watching an actor. Instead, it really does feel like, somehow, we are observing the actions and meditations of the sixteenth U.S. president as he navigates the end of the Civil War and pushes for the Thirteenth Amendment to forever outlaw the abhorrence of slavery.
Spielberg is another director whose entire filmography could fill this list. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a snapshot of boyhood in suburban America, told through the lens of a friendly alien fantasy. Raiders of the Lost Ark is an adventure tale about a fearless American professor fighting to protect history and antiquity. Saving Private Ryan is a harrowing fictional account that reflected the real sacrifices of American soldiers in World War II. Lincoln, however, is not just about the final four months in the life of an American president, but the fight to preserve America's soul.
The founders of the United States did not see fit to adequately protect all of America's citizens. They did not manifest enough faith in their own words, "All men are created equal ā¦" to apply that to people of all backgrounds, races and beliefs. But the bloody conflict of the Civil War and Lincoln's push to pass basic morality into enforceable law, was an effort to correct these errors.
Spielberg's film, headlined by Day-Lewis's Oscar-winning performance, dramatizes the quest to better ourselves. It is unforgettableāand undeniable.
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12. Unforgiven (1992)
Dir. Clint Eastwood
This is arguably the greatest western ever made, but it only achieves that by standing on the shoulders of other classics. Unforgiven is powerful because it is the last word on a genre that speaks deeply to American idealsāindividualism, justice, toughness. But Unforgiven punctures the legends, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Decades of other thrilling westerns built up this cloud of self-mythology in the American psyche, like a dirigible filled with hydrogen that Eastwood ignites with a hail of gunfire.
Who is good, who is bad, and who is right and wrong? Unforgiven suggests that these are moving targets, and that no one version is ever the full truth. The heroes of the Old West were often just the ones who survived, who killed their way to fame and glory, and took what might have otherwise belonged to others.
In 1952's High Noon, Gary Cooper was the righteous sheriff who stands alone against ruthless gunslingers. He was good. They were bad. But in Unforgiven, Gene Hackman's snarling sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett is not quite a villain, but he's definitely the heavy, and Eastwood's grizzled gunman Will Munny is, if not the hero, then at least the story's protagonist. The script by David Webb Peoples repeatedly makes the audience question its allegiances and perspectives.
Little Bill sparks the bloodshed by not appropriately punishing the cowboy who slashes up a prostitute's face. When the other women in that house of ill repute pool their money to hire killers to settle the vendetta, the showdown is set in motion. Along the way stumbles English Bob (Richard Harris) and his opportunistic biographer (Saul Rubinek), both of whom help Unforgiven make its point about the differences between frontier legend and actual truth.
The path of righteousness can only be found by clearing away the falsehoods we use to justify our actions. But even then, the randomness and brutality of life have their say. The same can be said for our country, which offers tremendous possibility and opportunity, but allows those who are willing to break the rules to take all they want. As Eastwood snarls in the movie's climax: "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."
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11. A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Dir. Elia Kazan
America loves a huckster. Burt Lancaster's Bible-thumping, hypocritical preacher in 1960's Elmer Gantry is one example of our predilection for con artists. Leonardo DiCaprio's boyish grifter in 2002's Catch Me If You Can is another.
Hollywood is full of charismatic charlatans, but none is quite as malignant as Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes in this unsettling drama about a vagrant who becomes a toxic messiah after a radio reporter (Patricia Neal) puts a microphone in front of him.
Had she not gone to the local jail to do a human-interest story about the people detained there, Rhodes might have just drifted out of town and into oblivion after sleeping off his drunk-and-disorderly arrest. But that bit of fate, and his magnetic, tell-it-like-it-is folksy charm, make him an instant star.
A regular radio show is offered. Then television appearances. Rhodes has the power to shape public opinion on a mass scale, but he has no morals, no empathy, and no interest in helping anyone except himself. His only talent is bullshit, andāas he says laterā"I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak!"
A Face in the Crowd is about how easily Americans can be swept up in a cult, and it begs people to be smarter about who they pledge their allegiance to. Nonetheless, we are bamboozled. We vote for politicians who exploit our fears and promise easy fixes. We pray to televangelists who claim to speak for the Almighty. We flush our money away on miracle supplements and phony cures while doubting the effectiveness of science-backed vaccines.
A Face in the Crowd is galvanized by Griffith's alluringly unhinged performance, made all the more compelling because we later knew him as the upright and honest sheriff of Mayberry on TV. But Lonesome Rhodes ā¦ he was terrifying. And he was a warning. One we didn't heed.
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10. Selma (2014)
Dir. Ava DuVernay
"Boycotting buses in Montgomery. Segregation in Birmingham. Now, voting in Selma. One struggle ends just to go right to the next and the next. If you think of it that way, it is a hard road. But I think of these efforts as one effort."
So says David Oyelowo's Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he stands at the pulpit before a congregation of the weary. They are ready to fight, but they've already been fighting, and he needs to keep their spirits high. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay knows that the full breadth of the civil rights era could not fit within the confines of a single movie, so she focuses her story on the culmination. It's 1965, King is uniting other factions in the Black community to join his nonviolence movement and march through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. Their goal is to demonstrate their shared humanity to the countless white Americans who refused to see it.
DuVernay does not make idols out of King or any of the leaders of this movement, including a young upstart named John Lewis (Stephan James), who would go on to serve seventeen terms as a "good trouble"āmaking U.S. congressman. She honors them by accepting them as human beingsāwhich is all that King ever wanted people to see.
They are flawed, but they try. They are tired, but they persevere. They make mistakes, they stumble, but they get back up and keep going. All of the hardships they face, all the cruelty and violence thrown at them, all the unfairness and evil they must endure serve as a shock to the American system. Hearts and minds change, including the one King needs to persuade mostāthe man in the White House, Tom Wilkinson's President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Selma is fraught with troubling scenes, and it focuses on people who pay a very high price for their triumph. But it is overall a rousing, hopeful film that dramatizes a moment from America's past that must be remembered, especially as the decades pass. Movies should not be tasked with teaching the nuances of history, but they can deliver the emotion and feeling that allows us to relate to one another.
DuVernay made a film that reminds this nation that our greatest strength is the power to grow and change.
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9. Casablanca (1942)
Dir. Michael Curtiz
Rick's CafƩ is a home away from home for the world's outcasts and refugees. In that way, it's practically an American embassy there at the northernmost edge of Africa, as Nazi invaders send people throughout Europe scrambling for escape. Rick offers drinks, gambling, and companionship for your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, etc. But like the U.S. itself, bad actors are free to come and go as well.
"I stick my neck out for nobody," says its proprietor, played by Humphrey Bogart in his most iconic role. And we almost believe him. This movie debuted in theaters in November 1942, less than a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched the U.S. into the conflagration of World War II. For years before that, debate raged about whether America should engage in the conflict. Casablanca is about getting off the fence and finally doing what you know is right.
Rick himself is a morally dubious fellow. He has soft spots for crooks and scammers, like Peter Lorre's ill-fated Ugarte, and corrupt lawmen, such as Claude Rains' Vichy Captain Louis Renault (who is shocked, shocked to discover gambling is taking placeāeven as he collects his winnings).
But they are the best of the worst. The Nazis who filter in through this Moroccan establishment are a far greater evil, but Bogart's Rick is tempted to side with them out of a personal vendetta. Ilsa, the woman he once loved (played luminously by Ingrid Bergman), passes through his gin joint with her husband, Victor, a resistance leader that the Third Reich would love to eliminate.
All Rick needs to do is let Victor be captured, let the Nazis take what they want, and pick up the pieces for himself, which might include Ilsa. Could America have done the same? Could we have sat out the war and hoped for the best? Never.
Rick may be a scoundrel, but his own soul isn't something he's willing to gamble. And if he truly loves Ilsa, wouldn't he want her to be safe? Casablanca is the story of self-discovery and selflessness. It's about succeeding, even when much is lost. It is the story of sacrifice for others, but being able to live with yourself.
Casablanca remains one of the great films ever made about the push and pull that exists within America's nature.
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8. All the President's Men (1976)
Dir. Alan J. Pakula
There are two people in this movie who play themselves: Frank Wills, the real-life Watergate security guard who first noticed the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and (via news footage) Richard M. Nixon, the U.S. president who was forced to resign after this opened up a Pandora's box full of scandals.
Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as The Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose Pulitzer prizeāwinning reporting helped connect the dots between the most powerful man in the country and the illegal dirty tricks that made even his most ardent supporters recoil.
Watergate was about showing that no one person is above the law. It also honors the traditions of freedom of speech and a fair and honest press, which serve as the safeguards for the values of this nation. On its fiftieth anniversary this year, I wrote at length about why this film remains vital, but a lot has been lost since then. America seems to have surrendered the ability to clearly see right from wrong.
All the President's Men reminds us of what we once were. Maybe we could be that way again.
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7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Dir. Frank Capra
There's something deceptively simplistic about this political comedy, but its idealism is hard to dismiss. James Stewart plays a naive Boy Scout-type who is appointed to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate because the corrupt powers-that-be from his state believe he will be easy to manipulate. But Mr. Smith intends to make a difference in our nation's capital. He proposes a bill to transform a tract of land into a youth camp, but that will undermine plans to use the same area for a dam project that will line the pockets of some of his fellow senators.
Therefore, Mr. Smith and his bill must be destroyed. That leads to a rousing finale in which Stewart breathlessly maintains a filibuster to prove his character and win over enough senators to save the day. During this climactic scene, with his tie askew his voice hoarse and sweat beading on his face, Stewart delivers a gut-punch to this revered body of politicians: "I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if behind them they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness. And a little looking out for the other fella too."
Dammit, he is naive. It's a simplistic view of how politics works. But he's also right. It's as true now as it was then. People in power tend to line their own pockets for as long as we let them, and all too seldom look out for the people who need them.
Director Frank Capra was an idealist. For proof of that, look no further than It's a Wonderful Life. He was an immigrant, born in Italy, whose family brought him to America as a child, and he came to believe in it fully, while still recognizing the intolerance and backwardness that could undermine its loftier ambitions. Capra became an American citizen after serving in the U. S. Army in World War I, and he stands as a real-life example of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. He also knew that once you were on your feet, you owed it to others to reach out your hand and help them up too.
Mr. Smiths are rare, but they do exist. We could use more of them.
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6. The Hurt Locker (2008)
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
There are many movies about military heroism, but this is one that looks at the cost our service members pay in the longterm. Sweeping political statements about war are not what The Hurt Locker is about. This film centers on the sacrifice of those who volunteer their bodies and minds in service to this country, and it humanizes the heroes we claim to revere. Our nation loves to applaud them, but isn't so great at caring for them in return.
Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty star as members of a bomb disposal unit in Baghdad who engage in the most deadly work imaginable ā¦ then come home and struggle to adjust to what used to be normal. Each is a ticking time bomb in his own way; they must be defused in order to survive.
At the Academy Awards, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow won best director, journalist Mark Boal took home best original screenplay, and the movie itself won best picture. But the legacy of The Hurt Locker is greater than any trophy. It's an unflinching portrait of honor, which is too often met with disregard.
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5. Smoke Signals (1998)
Dir. Chris Eyre
"It's a good day to be indigenous!" That's the wake-up call from the DJ on K-REZ radio, "the voice of the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation," as this sweet, silly, and moving story begins. The line, penned by author and screenwriter Sherman Alexie, is just one example of this movie's playful and indomitable spirit.
Alexie adapted the film from his 1994 short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and filmmaker Chris Eyre (later known for 2002's Skins and the 2022 TV series Dark Winds) perfectly captures his insightful and big-hearted take on life on and off the reservation. There are no stereotypes in this movie. No savages or noble mystics. In fact, the young characters seem mostly amused by those tropes. One of them is obsessed with Dances With Wolves.
The story follows two young men as they set off on a road trip from their rez in Idaho to a trailer park in Arizona. The pair couldn't be more different. Adam Beach's Victor Joseph is a jock, a handsome basketball star who is tough, charming, and confident. Evan Adams' Thomas Builds-the-Fire is a dweebāa chattery, bespectacled nerd who doesn't know it's not cool to wear his hair in braids. But Thomas has a mason jar stuffed with cash, and Victor needs the money to venture to Arizona and pick up the remains of his estranged father.
So, the jock and the misfit head off on a road trip together. They even joke about whether they might need passports as they venture off into America aboard their bus.
Hey, it's kind of like Stagecoach (No. 19 on this list). Victor and Thomas even run afoul of some cowboys, who take their seats at one of the rest stops and refuse to give them back. Some things never change, right? The story takes a turn when they reach their destination and meet the beautiful Suzy Song (Irene Bedard), who knew Victor's father and shares stories from his past that the old man could never bring himself to say.
Smoke Signals is one of the most beautiful movies ever made about the Native American experience, in part because it doesn't see that culture as a monolith. The movie brims with unique characters, some comical, some tragic, but most a mix of both.
That's what makes Alexie and Eyre's film so wondrous. It's about people from a specific tribe, but it's not tribal. We can all see ourselves in the people of Smoke Signals.
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4. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
Dir. Charles Reisner
Even if you've never seen this silent film classic, you've probably watched at least one scene: When Buster Keaton stands in front of a collapsing house and avoids being crushed only because he happens to be in the one spot where there's an open window.
This real-life stunt took people's breath away. A few inches of miscalculation would have killed the comedy legend. You could argue the wisdom of risking your life for a laugh, but the influence of Keaton's hilarious masterwork reverberated throughout the comedy of the past century.
He stars as the title character, a ukulele-strumming little fellow who longs to live up to his brawny father's expectations. His dad, Steamboat Bill Sr., oversees a Mississippi steamship, but the family business is imperiled by a rich man's state-of-the-art riverboat. Echoes of everything from Caddyshack to Tommy Boy can be seen here, and the movie directly inspired Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse short Steamboat Willie.
It's a classic David vs. Goliath story, but it endures as a testament to America's gumption and ingenuity. Snobs are scoundrels, but working-class heroes rule the day, especially after a cyclone hits town, causing the widespread destruction that Bill Jr. miraculously survives. The stunts and special effects devised by Keaton have to be seen to be believed, including an entire hospital building that lifts off its foundation.
Steamboat Bill Jr. is way wilder and more innovative than you can believe.
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3. The Godfather (1972)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
"I believe in America." This is the movie's opening line, spoken by an undertaker who has seen that belief shattered and now seeks justice from crime lord Don Corleone.
The Godfather, co-written by Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo, is about Italian gangsters, but it's really about the clash between the Old Country and the New World, about newcomers who aren't welcomed in society and so form their own systems of business, justice, and honor. "America has made my fortune," the undertaker continues. "And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but ā¦ I taught her never to dishonor her family."
After she is assaulted and scarred by two American men, the undertaker wishes to bury them. That's why he comes to Don Corleoneāwho is, frankly, a little insulted. He's not a killer. But okay, he'll rough up the guys to settle the score.
Marlon Brando's Don is a relic of the past. He's on his way out. His old-school ways are outdated in a modern, more ruthless world, and his war-hero son, Michael (Al Pacino), is the only one level-headed enough to carry on the family business. "My father is no different than any powerful man, like a president or senator," he says.
Kay (played by Diane Keaton) counters: "Do you know how naive you sound? Presidents and senators don't have men killed."
Michael can only pity her. "Who's being naive, Kay?" Through the lens of this one family, this one crime saga, we see a reflection of America at large, and the stories we repeat to assure ourselves we are doing the right thing.
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2. Citizen Kane (1941)
Dir. Orson Welles
An epic and mesmerizing character study. Charles Foster Kane begins as an innocent boy, imagining himself fighting heroically for the Union in the Civil War as he lunges down a snowy hillside on his beloved sled.
After his broke parents strike it rich with a gold mine, he grows up to be a fighter indeed, using his wealth and education to combat the corporate brutes he scorns (even though, technically, he's one of them). He becomes a newspaper owner and buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton to share his crusading stories with the world. But then, something goes awry.
The immense power he amasses becomes intoxicating. His appetites increase. His sense of fairness is overpowered by his thirst for more, more, more.
Welles and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz famously modeled their anti-hero on the real-life publishing baron William Randolph Hearst, whose decadence, affairs, and manipulations were legendary. His empire still exists today (you are reading a Hearst publication), but the real man is more specifically remembered as the inspiration for Citizen Kane's tragic idealist, who went very wrong while trying to do what's right.
It's a cautionary American tale. And there's something about this film that resonates with the others on this list. Many of them are warnings we have failed to heed. "I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you," his political rival, Boss Gettys, says in one memorable clash. "Only you're going to need more than one lesson ā¦ and you're going to get more than one lesson."
Truer words, boss.
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1. Do the Right Thing (1989)
Dir. Spike Lee
If there's a single shared trait among all the movies on this list, it's that they're all about finding a way to live together. America has never been just one thing, or just one people. We are a confluence of many. Different beliefs, traditions, and backgrounds all somehow fit togetherāexcept when they don't.
That's what led me to put Do the Right Thing at No. 1 on this collection. Spike Lee's film is steeped in these vital questions: Can we get along? And if not, why not?
It all starts on one of the hottest days to ever hit New York City, which lights the fuseāeven though the dynamite charges have been in place for a while. At Sal's Pizza, in the Bedford-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, local roustabout Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) eats his slice and scans the photographs of Italian-American luminaries like Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, and Dean Martin. "Hey Sal, how come there're no brothers on the wall?" he asks.
"You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place," replies Danny Aiello's Sal. But his shop is frequented by Black customers, so don't they deserve a place of honor too? That sets in motion a conflict that shifts from slurs and disses to actual violence and rioting.
The characters of Lee's masterpiece have so much in common, but they can't see it. In one of the movie's most powerful scenes, Lee's character, the delivery guy Mookie, has a heart-to-heart with Sal's racist son Pino (played by John Turturro). He asks him why he uses the N-word, when his favorite basketball player is Magic Johnson, favorite actor is Eddie Murphy, and favorite singer is Prince.
You could argue that it's not Mookie's responsibility to change the heart of this bigot, but he sees humanity in Pino. He's just asking him to see the same. Lee doesn't shy away from the harsh language and aggressions, big and small, that different people direct at each other, but his movie is about trying to navigate a way through those obstacles.
Some things can't be forgiven, however, and when Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn) becomes a casualty of police brutality, the whole neighborhood erupts. Earlier in the film, Mookie is stopped on his way to a pizza delivery by Da Mayor, a local stoop-dwelling drunk played by Ossie Davis, who has some wisdom to share: "Always do the right thing."
"I got it. I'm gone," Mookie replies. He does get it. And that's the line that shapes my view of the ending, which is open to many different interpretations. A riot surrounds Sal's Pizza, and Aiello and his boys are in the middle of it. Mookie lifts a trash can and hurls it through the window of his employers, leading the mob to burn it to the ground.
Why does he do this? You can have your own point of view, but mine is this: he's doing the right thing. He redirects the crowd's righteous anger toward the shop rather than Sal and his boys, which costs them their pizzeria but likely saves their lives.
The film is packed with powerhouse performances: Samuel L. Jackson's radio deejay, Ruby Dee's Mother Sister, John Savage's Clifton, and Rosie Perez's Tina are just a few who steal every scene. Public Enemy supplied the original song "Fight the Power," which stands as one of the most triumphant protest songs ever recorded. The movie even has a sly Donald Trump joke.
Do the Right Thing captures the spirit of America in all its complexity, all its contradictions, and all its authentic and potential beauty.
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Source: āAOL Entertainmentā
