50 Best Movies About America of the Past 50 Years

‘The Immigrant’ (2013)

It’s easy to sentimentalize the immigrant experience of the early 20th century — an approach writer and director James Gray studiously avoids in this sometimes harrowing, often bittersweet chronicle of a Polish Catholic woman (Marion Cotillard), who comes to Ellis Island in 1921 in an attempt to begin her life anew. She’s subsequently slandered, kidnapped, and prostituted. Joaquin Phoenix plays the man responsible for much of her ordeal, but who believes he has enough love in his heart to render his sins forgivable. It’s a worldview is clear-eyed enough to see the duality of America: a place of endless opportunity, and of limitless exploitation. —J.B.

‘Margaret’ (2011)

Introduced furiously debating her classmates about 9/11, the 17-year-old protagonist of writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s follow-up to You Can Count On Me represents a generation of young New Yorkers coming of age in its aftermath. That same feeling of helplessness and moral outrage in the face of tragedy propels Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) to act after she witnesses a fatal bus accident and then decides that she’ll be to the one to make sure justice is served. There are catastrophic mistakes in her self-appointed journey, to be sure, but Lonergan gives the fullest imaginable portrait of a young woman whose flawed nobility is as hopeful a vision of the future as he can muster. —S.T.

‘Stranger Than Paradise’ (1984)

Far from the redwood forest and the Gulf Stream waters, between California and the New York island, this land also includes the frozen, snow-dusted Lake Erie of Stranger Than Paradise — and that land is our land, too. Jim Jarmusch’s breakthrough comedy was a watershed moment in American independent cinema mainly for showing us parts of the country we never get to see on screen, like that bleak glimpse of Cleveland in the winter. It also introduced us to Americans we never get to meet, either, like a surly Brooklyn layabout (John Lurie) whose grand big-screen adventure is to drive his Hungarian cousin to see their Aunt Lotte. —S.T.

‘Slacker’ (1990)

Thank you, Richard Linklater, for keeping Austin weird. The filmmaker’s breakthrough feature takes a tour of the Lone Star state’s bohemian city, and gives us a patchwork quilt of conspiracy theorists, college grads, café dwellers, alt-cuture vultures and the occasional celebrity-pap-smear-selling oddball. The title itself became think-piece synonymous with aimless hipsters and the overall demographic of early ’90s twentysomethings — X marks the generation — that had adopted irony and apathy (or, if they couldn’t be bothered, lethargy) as default stances. Yet you can’t deny how affectionate Linklater, and by extension, moviegoers feel about the colorful Texans that populated his adopted home at the time. It’s like turning over a rock and instead of finding squirming bugs, you discover a funky, semi-caffeinated and slightly pot-addled paradise lurking underneath. —D.F.

‘Boyz n the Hood’ (1991)

By 1991, a large percentage of Americans had either heard gangsta rap or at least heard of gangsta rap. So many moral watchdogs were so busy debating the language and terminology in this musical subgenre that few actually dug into what the lyrics reflecting in regards to the real world — how, to paraphrase non-gangsta-rapper Chuck D., these songs were partially doubling as Black America’s CNN at the time. John Singleton’s movie took a lot of elements from this type of West Coast hip-hop (the title itself is from an instant-classic Eazy E song; Ice Cube plays one of the leads), stripped them of their sensationalistic bravado, yet kept the urgency and the sense of reportage. This, it said, is the good, the bad, and the ugly of what it’s like to live in “the hood” in L.A. There’s joy, there’s a sense of community, and in the presence of Larry Fishburne’s dream-dad Furious Styles, there are folks looking out for the kids and looking out for one another. There’s also fascist cops, racist authorities, the constant sound of helicopters and confrontations that escalate with the speed of a gunshot. It’s a time capsule of an American place at a specific moment. And it’s not a coincidence that the first thing you see is the word “STOP.” —D.F.

‘Brooklyn’ (2015)

Some of the finest cinematic explorations of the American experiment have focused on the immigrant experience, and few have done so with as much empathy and heart as John Crowley’s tale of an Irish girl’s life-changing journey, circa 1952. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis, who escapes the confines of her Irish village for a humble life as New York shop girl, and faces an uncertain future there. Adapting Colm Toibin’s novel, screenwriter Nick Hornby adroitly captures both the aching pain of homesickness and the subtle way that an unwelcoming environment can slowly start to seem like the only place we belong. —J.B.

‘Melvin and Howard’ (1980)

No filmmaker had more affection for everyday Americans than Jonathan Demme — his work brims with a love of the polymorphic mix that makes up the U.S. of A.’s populace, even (especially) the cracked, the kooky and the perpetually daydreaming. You immediately understand why he might have been attracted to the story of one Melvin Dummar, a gentleman who simply wants to be recognized Milkman of the Month and keep his possessions from being repossessed. One night, he picks up an old man hitchhiking on the side of the road. They chat, a little. They sing “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Dummar drops his new friend off at a hotel in Las Vegas. Soon, it comes to light that eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes has passed away, and has left a good deal of his fortune to a kind stranger, who once gave him a ride late one night…. Demme isn’t interested whether or not Dummar’s claim to those gifted riches is legit or not; he’s much more intrigued by what happens to those who chase the American Dream, and what happens when those who, say, tap-dance on gameshows to get rich suddenly find themselves on the verge of having something like that dream unexpectedly come true. —D.F.

‘First Reformed’ (2017)

America’s origin myth is heavy on rational men writing impassioned letters to other rational men with rational objections to their Enlightenment ideals. That belief is put to the test in Paul Schrader’s film, which asks the question: How can humanity be essentially good when we destroy our world and each other with so little thought? Ethan Hawke’s Reverend Ernst Toller is a simple man, living an austere lifestyle in service to a historical church in upstate New York. He embodies the modest intellectualism of Thoreau and Emerson — but the world as he sees it is not a place where justice ultimately prevails. The stormy crisis of faith that follows reflects the despair felt by many who were taught that America could reason its way out of any crisis, and whose trust in humanity is continually challenged in a cruel, bleak world that only seems to get crueler and bleaker. —K.R.

‘The Florida Project’ (2017)

What’s more American than Disney World? How about the seedy Orlando motels outside the Magic Kingdom, where hustlers squeeze a few dollars out of tourists who’ve wandered too far from Mickey Mouse. Six-year-old Brooklynn Prince plays a modern-day Little Rascal named Moonee: a pint-sized dynamo running wild with her friends, loosely supervised by their sporadically employed parents and Willem Dafoe’s saintly motel manager. Director Sean Baker’s raucous drama is brutally honest about what it’s like to live on society’s margins, where the background ambience consists of blaring TV commercials and screaming arguments. But Baker also salutes this country’s inventive spirit, as kids like Moonee find ways to turn squalor into their playground. —N.M.

‘Lincoln’ (2012)

Director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner humanize an American icon in this lively biopic, which sticks mostly with the first few months of Abraham Lincoln’s second term, when he cajoled a reluctant Congress into abolishing slavery. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a layered take on Honest Abe, playing him as fiercely determined to get things done yet amiable enough to inspire devotion. This Abe cracks jokes and tells stories to disarm his opponents. But he also shouts angrily and pushes ethical boundaries when he must. He’s not some remote historical figure, chiseled in marble. This 16th President of the United States is endearingly flawed — which makes him all the more impressive. —N.M.

‘Style Wars’ (1983)

It’s a key document of the early, rough ‘n’ ready days of “the prime expression of a new young people’s subculture called ‘hip-hop,'” specifically bombing trains and breakdancing. (MC-ing, regrettably, is mostly AWOL.) And it’s easy to view Tony Silver’s seminal documentary as little more than a history lesson, a snapshot of Ed Koch’s NYC, or a sort of Deadline-style report on this new fad among mostly Latinx and African-American kids in the boogie-down Bronx, where, like, they’re vandalizing subways and spinning on their heads! Yet to revisit this look at what was happening in the outer boroughs — and would soon be bleeding into downtown Manhattan, and far beyond — is to watch a portrait of a truly American art form just beginning to find its feet. You don’t just get to see legends like Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón and Donald “DONDI” White and the Rock Steady Crew in action. You also get a fly-on-the-wall view of the scene’s infighting; how underground movements risk getting co-opted (that gallery sequence!); how youth culture thrives when bumping up against authority and why, to live outside the law, you must be honest; and see folks debate who gets to call what “art.” Everybody, keep rockin’ and clockin’ and shockin’! —D.F.

‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)

The American southwest looks luminous through the eyes of German director Wim Wenders and Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, who find an eerie poetry in flat, featureless landscapes and the fluorescent glow of gas station lights. Screenwriters Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson keep their story rooted in Old West mythology, following a lost soul named Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) as he wanders through the Texas. He eventually lands in Los Angeles with his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell), who gives him the time and space he needs to start atoning for his destructive past. The twangy Ry Cooder soundtrack adds a folksy atmosphere to a movie that captures a country at once haunted by old ghosts and ripe with the possibility of renewal. —N.M.

‘The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez’ (1982)

In 1901, in the town of Kenedy, Texas, a Mexican husband and father named Gregorio Cortez (Edward James Olmos) shot a lawman in self-defense. After taking his wounded brother to a neighbor’s house, he fled the scene; a posse of Texas rangers chased him for two weeks before capturing him and forcing him to stand trial for murder. This recounting of Lone-Star-State lore by director Charles M. Young (whose 1977 work Alambrista! was one of the rare, early American independent movies to focus on the plight of the migrant worker) follows the story made popular by the age-old corrido about the crime, but isn’t content to merely print the legend. It also shows you what happened from a number of perspectives, including Cortez’s account, and thus gives you a better sense of how a misunderstanding around language and a longstanding prejudice against immigrants led to tragedy. A landmark of Chicano cinema, Ballad recreated turn-of-the-century border life, reminded us that the justice system in this country has always been skewed, and showed how — with the help of the media and a song — a humble farmer could morph into a folk hero. —D.F.

‘Zodiac’ (2007)

On July 4th, 1969, as fireworks pop off in the skies above the Bay Area city of Vallejo, California, the “Zodiac” killer shoots his first two victims in lovers’ lane. One month later, an encrypted letter is sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, with the killer threatening to murder a dozen more people unless it gets published. The summer of ’69 was a famously turbulent season for the nation, but director David Fincher’s meticulous procedural evokes an entire city held hostage by a single deadly and elusive threat that dissipates without being extinguished. In this memory piece, violence is a lingering fog. —S.T.

‘I Am Not Your Negro’ (2016)

Raoul Peck’s revealing documentary — based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House — chronicles racism in America through the writer’s friendships with Civil Rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Moving with sharp precision and a biting lyricism, I Am Not Your Negro harnesses the ferocity that Baldwin felt about America’s unrelenting racism, buffered by collages that retrace the pervasiveness of prejudice in classic Hollywood movies and newsreels. And connections with contemporary incidents (see: Ferguson) are made, eloquently weaved to craft a new historical record. Samuel L Jackson provides a throaty voiceover that captures the tenor of a man who always thought this nation could be a more perfect union. It’s the belief in that promise, and its brokenness, that makes this movie so achingly American. —R.D.

‘They Live’ (1988)

As the Reagan era were finally winding down, John Carpenter’s alien invasion thriller took stock of the wreckage, aligning itself with a mullet-headed laborer (“Rowdy” Roddy Piper) who moves into a homeless shantytown outside L.A. and discovers that aliens live among us. Through a pair of special sunglasses, he can see these invaders; he can also see the subliminal monochromatic messages used to enslave people, urging them to conform, consume and reproduce like docile capitalist zombies. Thank god our hero has come to chew bubblegum and kick ass, because the joke of They Live is that the aliens aren’t really necessary. —S.T.

‘Norma Rae’ (1979)

No stranger to making movies about small-town, working-class life (see: Sounder, Murphy’s Romance), Martin Ritt gave us this Oscar winner starring Sally Field as a great American every-hero: Norma Rae Webster, a widowed single mom whose family and friends all work in the local textile mill. When union organizer Ron Leibman rolls into town, she becomes an unlikely ally — at which point her story taps into the universal experience of finding a cause and, unexpectedly, finding yourself in the process. There’s an all-American spirit of rebellion in Norma Rae, whose been pushed around, overlooked, and underestimated her entire life; fought on all sides, she stubbornly digs in her heels and fights for what’s right. —J.B.

‘Tangerine’ (2015)

Sean Baker’s breakout film was initially known as “the iPhone movie,” and indeed the ingenuity behind this $100,000 feature is as American as a fist fight in a donut-shop parking lot on Christmas Eve. Look beyond the gimmick, however, and you’ll find a portrait of the true diversity of our country, a land of immigrants and strivers where a Black transgender sex worker can strike up a friendship with an Armenian cab driver (her favorite client). What binds them all is a stubborn will to survive and be themselves, no matter the cost. Alexandra (Mya Taylor), the film’s protagonist, pays to sing in a nightclub for the pure joy of expressing herself on stage, and her bond with her best friend Sindee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is stronger than the most hateful heckler or most manipulative fuckboy. It’s an American dream formed on the streets of Hollywood, modest but equally valid. —K.R.

‘Badlands’ (1973)

Holly (Sissy Spacek) is a 15-year old majorette in a quaint South Dakota town. Kit (Martin Sheen) is the antisocial, cold-blooded murderer with the James Dean vibe who charms her. After he murders her father (Warren Oates), the two go on the lam in order to evade the law, another fugitive couple on the run. Based loosely on the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate’s murder spree in 1958, Terrance Malick’s debut film brims with its own outlaw spirit, as well as his love of Midwest Americana: the fields of grain, the vintage signage, the myth of the lawless frontier and the folk legends it creates. These characters are rebels without a cause, a care or a moral compass. He doesn’t lionize them or condemn them. They’re as much as part of the landscape, in Malick’s eyes, as the open road. —R.D.

‘The Master’ (2012)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s evocative, subliminally rich character study depicts concerns charlatans — America’s biggest export — and loosely tells the origins of something that looks and smells a lot like Scientology. A violent, traumatized World War II veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) finds himself adrift until the hypnotic head of a cult, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) reignites his latent desire to defend an ideal. Through their relationship, we can see the foreshadowing of an erosion of trust that will seriously metastasize in the last half of the 20th century. In other words, it’s the tale of a younger generation’s disenchantment with big-talking, feckless leaders. Plus ça change… —R.D.

‘How to Survive a Plague’ (2012)

Covering the AIDS epidemic from the start and from the frontlines made journalist David France uniquely qualified to open a window into that tragic chapter in American history. Yet his archival, boots-on-the-ground documentary is more than just a snapshot of a devastating moment or a timeline of a movement. Per its title, it’s also a kind of guidebook for budding activists, finding stirring engagement lessons in a community’s fight for lives and against a government indifferent to the loss of them. When we talk about organized resistance in America, it’s often in regards to the unrest of the ’60s. How to Survive a Plague is a powerful reminder that the rebellious spirit of that era lives on in the battles of later ones, and that there’s power in numbers, even when those numbers are dwindled by the very threat they’re meeting head on. —A.A.D.

‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001)

When Naomi Watts’ fresh-faced ingenue arrives at LAX, she’s bathed in bright, white Southern California sunlight. That angelic glow is deceptive, however, as David Lynch’s vision for this masterpiece is pitch black. This Tinseltown is an empire of broken dreams and sinister puppet masters, their faces obscured in shadow behind glass. The fact that Lynch uses the all-American archetype of the cowboy as the messenger for these anonymous oligarchs says a lot about his attitude towards American myth-making, as does the film’s bifurcated structure contrasting innocent ambition with disappointing reality. The director has always been driven by the desire to deconstruct — but not demystify — our most cherished illusions. And what better facade to tear down and rebuild in his own image than the Hollywood dream factory? —K.R.

‘Blazing Saddles’ (1974)

Or: How the West Was Won, one glorious fart at a time. (Is there anything more American than a bunch of men sitting around a campfire and literally talking out of their asses?) Part parody of Westerns and part old-fashioned gross-out comedy, Mel Brooks’ story of a Black sheriff recruited by a corrupt attorney general — the idea being that the citizens of the quaint frontier town of Rock Ridge would never accept an African-American lawman, and thus leave their value property ripe for the taking — is still a strong contender for the funniest movie ever made. But thanks to a killer screenplay cowritten by Richard Pryor, who Brooks had wanted to cast as the lead, the movie is playing with dynamite, and not just in the scenes featuring literal TNT. There are racial stereotypes galore, played for laughs in the most subversive ways imaginable; Brooks and Co. also take it for granted that prejudice and bigotry are as much part of the American landscape as tumbleweeds and the craggy mountains of Monument Valley. And yet Cleavon Little’s Bart still triumphs over the rednecks and racists and wins over the town’s respect. He even rehabilitates the town drunk, Gene Wilder’s Waco Kid — a role that Brooks offered to no less than John Wayne (!!!). Frontier mythology gets the revisionist hero it deserves. That, and some top-shelf fart jokes. —D.F.

‘O.J.: Made in America’ (2016)

Orenthal James Simpson was a charismatic Black athlete who bridged this country’s racial divide — he embodied the American dream, proving to be an inspiration to kids who wanted to believe they too could overcome their circumstance. Director Ezra Edelman chronicles what happened after the happy ending, delivering an exhaustive, despairing snapshot of not just a man but also a nation. Just as thoughtful in its examination of Simpson’s sports career as his murder trial, this Oscar-winning documentary connects the dots between race, class, politics and stardom, illustrating how each of them impacted O.J. — and, also, how he came to symbolize the conflicting impulses within the country itself. Americans love a triumph-over-the-odds saga because we like telling ourselves fantasies. Made in America disabuses us of such fanciful notions, arguing that his sobering downfall couldn’t have happened in any other nation on Earth. —T.G.

‘Wendy and Lucy’ (2008)

Michelle Williams is Wendy, a drifter journeying across the Pacific Northwest, her sights set on a potential cannery job in Alaska. Her only companion is her loyal dog Lucy, who goes missing after her car breaks down — a frightening prospect for a young woman with barely any money and few options. This spare drama anticipated the Great Recession, but the film’s power doesn’t derive from current events. Rather, it’s how director Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff) effortlessly captures a vanishing individualism in an America that would rather ignore the poor than offer a shred of kindness. The everyday individuals Wendy who help her along the way are this movie’s faint glimmer of hope: When our country abandons us, we have to rely on each other. —T.G.

‘Safe’ (1995)

America is a land of opportunity — unless you get sick, of course, in which case you’re screwed. Todd Haynes’ chilling psychological horror film drives a stake through the heart of the Reagan era, setting his story in the vapid San Fernando Valley in 1987 as ineffectual housewife Carol (Julianne Moore) starts suffering from debilitating phantom maladies. What’s causing her body to break down? The film keeps such answers teasingly unresolved, which allows Haynes more time to focus on diagnosing this nation’s many ills, whether it’s our unhealthy obsession with materialism, our failure to promptly respond to the AIDS crisis or our willingness to be seduced by false prophets selling salvation. And through Moore’s frightened eyes, we see how America’s patriarchal society cruelly dismisses women’s concerns about their bodies — a nauseating tendency that, as the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade demonstrates, continues today. —T.G.

‘Blue Collar’ (1978)

In which Paul Schrader makes a strong case that the labor movement is both the best and worst thing ever to happen to the American working class. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto give feisty, profanity-spiked performances as Detroit auto plant lifers, so fed up with the job’s daily indignities that they rob their local UAW office, in the name of getting even with their hapless shop steward and corrupt union president — and, ultimately, just to make ends meet. The film is funny, suspenseful and righteously angry, arguing that nearly everything organized workers won in the first half of the 20th century had been stolen back by the greedy and powerful. —N.M.

‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974)

Clueless cityslickers wander off the beaten path and learn the hard way that it’s a whole other country out there. Their teachers: a family of shitcanned slaughterhouse workers aiming their tools and grisly expertise at any interlopers unlucky enough to stray into their decaying, depressed backwoods. Tobe Hooper’s timelessly terrifying proto-slasher runs more on nightmare fuel than any sociopolitical agenda, but that doesn’t discount the quintessentially American frictions hiding beneath its tautly stretched and sutured skin. This pseudo-snuff horror classic expresses urban-versus-rural conflict in the most primal terms, making “eat the rich” ghoulishly literal and putting the red into what we’d only much later label a “red state.” The only thing uglier than Leatherface is the ongoing culture war his mayhem abstractly reflects. —A.A.D.

‘Harlan County, USA’ (1976)

The indomitable struggle of Appalachian coal miners to maintain their dignity while doing dangerous, dirty, and essential work represents the best of our nation. It’s power in numbers. It’s communities coming together for mutual aid. It’s a peoples’ movement, built on ancient soil that’s already been soaked with far too much blood. Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary soundtracks their struggle with the similarly homespun sounds of bluegrass music, bringing in artists like singer and West Virginia native Hazel Dickens — herself the daughter and wife of coal miners — whose commitment to the struggle is as unshakable as the mountains all around them. The miners of Harlan County, Kentucky, won’t forget what their forebears fought and died for. Neither will Kopple and her crew, who were attacked and nearly killed filming a scene of company workers firing on protestors. —K.R.

‘Malcolm X’ (1992)

Spike Lee fought like hell to make his 1992 Malcolm X biopic, arguing loudly and publicly for years that a Black American revolutionary needed to have his story told by an equally radical filmmaker. The movie he delivered more than justified his passion: It’s a true epic about a contradictory and inspirational American figure, with the scope of Lawrence of Arabia and Gandhi yet made with the dynamic, cutting-edge spirit of Goodfellas and JFK. Denzel Washington captures Malcolm’s wit, thoughtfulness and oratorical fire with uncanny accuracy. What results is a nuanced take on race relations and power, connecting the volatile past audiences had read about in history books with the urgent demands of the present — and now, the future. —N.M.

‘Boyhood’ (2014)

For 12 years, director Richard Linklater shot bits and pieces of his pet project in secret, following the development of a young Texan named Mason as the actor who played him, Ellar Coltrane, aged in real time. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke took part in the experiment, too, playing Mason’s single mother and wayward father, respectively. But the backdrop is an important character in itself, as the country gets older too. From May 2002 to August 2013, Mason lives through Harry Potter book release parties and Presidential elections, and as he matures, he needs to figure out what kind of citizen he wants to be. The country is his parent, too. —S.T.

‘Paris Is Burning’ (1990)

American culture is driven by Black culture and queer culture. Full stop. So it should come as no surprise that Jenni Livingston’s 1990 documentary has turned out to be one of the most quietly influential films of the last 50 years. Merriam-Webster added “shade” to the dictionary in 2017, some 27 years after drag queen Dorian Corey broke down the term; RuPaul quotes the film verbatim on Drag Race, dispersing catchphrases and concepts that originated in the ballroom scene to viewers around the world. It’s a long way from a humid Harlem dance hall at 3 a.m., and many of the film’s subjects are no longer with us. But the irrepressible creativity and defiant joy of Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people in the face of oppression and death (this was the height of the AIDS crisis, don’t forget) still serves as a beacon and a lifeline, especially as America moves into another dark period for gender rebels and sexual minorities. —K.R.

‘The Right Stuff’ (1983)

It’s one of the signature shots of 1980s American cinema: a line of Mercury astronauts, played by ruggedly handsome young actors like Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward and Dennis Quaid, walking slowly down a corridor in shiny new spacesuits, looking like U.S. legends before they’ve even left the Earth. In writer-director Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s bestseller, viewers can read that image either as a salute to brave heroes or as a gentle poke at NASA’s over-the-top publicity machine. This look back at the early days of the space-race is equal parts stirring and sly, reclaiming patriotic pride for all those kids who grew up distrusting authority — but who still thought John Glenn and Alan Shepard were unassailably cool. —N.M.

‘Taxi Driver’ (1976)

Martin Scorsese’s movies hum with the electricity of New York — but never with as much paranoid energy as his poisonous tribute to the city’s ugly underside. Opening during America’s bicentennial year, offering a somber portrait of a nation reeling from Vietnam and descending into moral bankruptcy, Taxi Driver drew inspiration from Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, updating the tale to chronicle a mentally disturbed war vet, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), as he seeks a release from the anger and sexual frustration seething inside him. In this fever dream of a character study, politicians and pimps are equally disreputable, and a bad man with a gun roams the streets, looking for a suitable target. That this bad man is also our main character only makes the film’s indictment of America all the more stinging: Bickle’s deranged ramblings start to make a weird sort of sense once you see what this unstable country has done to him. —T.G.

‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

Less than two years after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, along came Hollywood to dramatize and valorize the investigative journalism so instrumental to his downfall. Alan J. Pakula’s thrilling newspaper procedural captures for posterity a monumental moment in American culture and politics, as seen through the truth-seeking eagle eyes of the reporters, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), who broke the Watergate scandal. In one sense, it’s a time capsule of national awakening, immortalizing a sea change in the public’s perception of our government. (All future depictions of Washington as a shadow world of cloak-and-dagger conspiracies owe some debt of influence to this movie.) On the more hopeful front, the movie is also a tribute to a core American tenet, celebrating a free press through an appreciation of all the unglamorous legwork of shoe-leather muckraking. Time has, of course, rendered some aspects of its true story rather quaint. Remember, with bittersweet nostalgia, a time when elected officials were held accountable for their crimes? —A.A.D.

‘Selma’ (2014)

Like several recent superb biopics, Ava DuVernay’s exploration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. isn’t some unwieldy cradle-to-grave portrait — rather, it’s laser-focused on a small but crucial segment of his life, an epochal moment that didn’t just define the man but also the country he sought to change.  King (David Oyelowo) is committed to ensuring the passage of the Voting Rights Act, even when many in America — including sometimes-ally President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) — stand in furious opposition. History tends to simplify this civil rights leader’s legacy, painting him as a humble, peaceful protestor. But Selma corrects that narrative, giving us a brilliant tactician and determined warrior whose steely resolve in the face of virulent racism borders on the miraculous. DuVernay and her deft ensemble — including Carmen Ejogo, André Holland, Colman Domingo and Tessa Thompson — crafted a stirring drama rippling with urgency that’s now flecked with sorrow. King lived to see the Voting Rights Act made into law. He would be long gone when the Supreme Court blithely dismantled it in 2021. —T.G.

‘American Graffiti’ (1973)

Nostalgia — whether it’s for a real paradise lost, an imaginary past, or something in between — is as American as baseball, apple pie, and a Mel’s Drive-In patty melt. And for George Lucas, yesterday’s utopia is Main St. on Modesto, California, circa 1962. His ambling, free-form look back at the days of his youth (he would have been 18 that year) watches how a handful of stories play out over the course of one long, crazy night. Will high school sweethearts Ron Howard and Cindy Williams break up? Will Richard Dreyfuss meet that mystery blonde in the white T-bird? Can hot rodder Paul LeMat beat fellow souped-up gearhead Harrison Ford in a drag race? Where they end up is less important than environment they cruise through, which takes place in the early 1960s but feels like a ’50s Americana Fever Dream of car culture, drive-in burger joints and Golden Oldies rock & roll. (Its wax-museum version of the time period is responsible for everything from the Happy Days extended universe to Sha Na Na getting a TV show.) The where-are-they-now disclaimer at the end punctures the spell, yet it still strives to capture a Norman Rockwell vision of Anytown USA in amber. “You can’t stay 17 forever,” Howard says. Maybe not, but like a lot of folks in his generation, he’s going to hold on to that moment as long as possible. —D.F.

‘Chan Is Missing’ (1982)

It’s the American dream (one facet of it, anyway) is to own your own business. For Jo, an elderly Chinese-American taxi driver, that means getting a cab to call his own; his nephew, Steve, is going in on the deal with him. They just need to find Chan Hung, a local who owes them some money. Only the man is missing, and no one can find him. No one can even agree on who Chan really is. Forget it, guys — it’s San Francisco’s Chinatown. Wayne Wang’s debut film kicks the tires on buddy comedies and detective movies (it’s not a coincidence that the AWOL gent shares a name with a popular stereotypical investigator from past pulp fictions), but more importantly, it lets Asian-American characters and Asian-American culture take center stage. And it’s there in the spotlight that Wang and his collaborators both celebrate and interrogate a rich, versatile community that’s bound together by two common continents and fractured by a million other differences. —D.F.

‘The Candidate’ (1972)

The Watergate scandals were still on the horizon when director Michael Ritchie and screenwriter Jeremy Larner delivered this wry and prescient takedown of American politics, circa ’72. Robert Redford shines as Bill McKay: a charming activist who reluctantly agrees to be the Democrats’ sacrificial lamb in a U.S. senate race that should be a lock for his Republican counterpart. When Bill’s impassioned TV ads turn the dark horse into a legit contender, however, his campaign managers urge him to make his message blander in order to appeal to more voters. The movie lays out the weaselly compromises accompanying a rise to power. And its closing line — “What do we do now?” — is a still-potent indictment of leaders too timid to lead. —N.M.

‘Goodfellas’ (1990)

While Francis Ford Coppola lent the crimes of Italian-American gangsters the sweeping grandeur of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, his New Hollywood peer adopted a dimmer, less romantic view. Drawing from the nonfiction account Wiseguy, Martin Scorsese’s ruthless, detail-oriented, decades-spanning procedural paints the Mafia as a boys’ club of immoral hotheads: taking what they want when they want it, disdainful of hard work, devoted to nothing but easy money, brute power, and desire. Even their supposed loyalty to each other is a joke, given that Henry Hill (the late Ray Liotta) and his fellow crooks are willing to murder or rat on their closest friends to protect themselves. Goodfellas presents organized crime as the ugly epitome of me-first enterprise — the “fuck you, pay me” mentality taken to its logical nightmare extreme. It’s really no wonder Scorsese has long been accused of glorifying these monsters: He had the guts to acknowledge the allure of living only for your own appetites, an American dream sweet only because it’s rotten. —A.A.D.

‘Daughters of the Dust’ (1991)

It took nearly 100 years for a Black woman director to have her movie distributed in theaters in the United States. That’s America, and so is the determination and grit it must have taken for writer-director-producer Julie Dash to get Daughters of the Dust made. The community featured in this hypnotic, stirring film is all-American as well: the Gullah Geechee people, former slaves whose isolation allowed them to preserve West African belief systems and ways of life. Its story is set at a pivotal point in Gullah history, as members of the Peazant family prepare to leave their island home off the coast of Georgia for the mainland. It’s the turn of the 20th century, and new ideas are in the air. Dash’s film documents the conflicting emotions experienced by the Peazant women as they try to reconcile their commitment to their ancestors and desire for self-determination. Ironically, the traditions rejected by the younger characters are now being reclaimed by African-Americans searching for their roots, which led to Beyoncé using the film as an aesthetic touchstone for her Lemonade visual album. —K.R.

‘Hoop Dreams’ (1994)

Plant your camera anywhere in America for five years and you’re bound to emerge with some essential truths about the country. The documentarian Steve James stumbled upon more than a few when his plans for a 30-minute PBS short about a local playground evolved into a long-term shooting commitment, spurred by the decision to just keep filming two Chicago teens (William Gates and Arthur Agee) hoping that their talents on the court will lead to glory in the NBA. With the scope of a great novel, Hoop Dreams captures milestones and setbacks, big games and holidays, joys and sorrows — it’s an intimate nonfiction epic of ordinary life in the city. But as its subjects grow older, and their aspirations collide with hard luck and high expectations, James’ footage begins to coalesce into a larger, more withering insight: For too many kids, athletics are less a road to somewhere better than an uncaring machine, chewing up their bodies and hopes alike. —A.A.D.

‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974)

Yes, it’s arguably the best sequel in the history of American cinema. But more importantly, Francis Ford Coppola’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Italian-American epic is one of the quintessential films about our nation’s 20th century: the triumphs, the failures, and the poisoned grasp for wealth. It recounts the humble immigrant origins of underworld patriarch Vito Corleone (a tremendous Robert De Niro). It wields aspirational imagery: A young Vito on Ellis Island looks out at the Statue of Liberty with dreams of forging a future in a country similarly finding its place in the world (and, like Vito, finds its rise fueled by blood). And then it shows us how those vines bind his son Michael (Al Pacino) with ruthlessness after World War II. Ultimately, like America, Michael becomes an isolated superpower. But at what cost? —R.D.

‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)

Spike Lee’s fight-the-power masterpiece, the creative pinnacle of a career and a decade, hit theaters like a trash can hurled through a glass pane. While critics raved and moviegoers came out in droves, nervous pundits scaremongered that this portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood exploding into violence on the hottest day of the year would inspire Black audiences to riot — a racist panic that only reinforced the film’s rejection of “post-racial America” as a naive fantasy. That Do the Right Thing has scarcely aged a day in three decades is a testament to its exhilarating style and powerhouse performances, but also a reflection of the sad truth that its teeming Bed-Stuy — a powder keg of tensions, inequities, and police brutality — remains a microcosm for the country at large. To ask if Lee’s Mookie “does the right thing,” as so many have for so many years, is to echo the handwringing of those more concerned for storefronts than the men choked to death outside of them. —A.A.D.

‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007)

Shortly after that bellowing that endlessly quoted line about milkshakes and before delivering the spoken equivalent of a film-closing Fin intertitle, Daniel Plainview issues a savage parting gloat: “I told you I would eat you up.” The mad oil baron, played by a seething, Oscar-winning Daniel Day-Lewis, has made good on his threat to swallow his enemy whole. It’s the deranged climax of a battle waged across hours of runtime and decades of screentime — a grudge match to the death between twin forces of homegrown exploitation and manipulation. Like most of the movies written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this towering, blazing derrick of a historical epic is a character study with an eye towards the character of a nation. Rewinding back to the turn of a 20th century ruled by bloodthirsty businessmen, Anderson excavates an origin story of modern avarice and ambition from the soil of an Upton Sinclair pageturner. What is Plainview’s bloody victory but the moment when capitalism finally, fully consumed Chrstianity to become the dominant belief system of America? —A.A.D.

‘Killer of Sheep’ (1977)

Charles Burnett’s tale of a spiritually exhausted slaughterhouse employee “working myself into my own hell” in post-riot Watts started out as a the filmmaker’s thesis project at UCLA; it’s now rightfully considered a key work of the L.A. Rebellion film movement and the sort of debut movie that invites comparisons to A Love Supreme and Leaves of Grass as much as other ’70s stories of scraping by. The family at the center of this free-flowing, lyrical en extremis drama are struggling in a city that still feels like its vibrating from past civil unrest, and the movie doubles nicely as a snapshot of a Southern California neighborhood at a certain time and a certain social intersection. But it’s also a work of extreme American beauty, from the shots of kids jumping across rooftops to a couple slow-dancing in their living room. (J. Hoberman called the movie “an urban pastoral,” and the description could not be more apt.) Issues over music rights kept the film out of circulation for years, which is ironic considering how the Black American music Burnett chose is such a vital ingredient to the sound and vision he’s gifting this portrait of African-American life; everyone talks about Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” playing over an intimate moment, but you also can’t beat a girl soulfully singing Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Reasons” to her doll. It eventually found the broader audience it had rightfully earned and got the modern-classic status it rightfully deserved — a tragedy turned into an American success story. —D.F.

‘Chinatown’ (1974)

Americans like to think their government functions according to a logical series of rules designed by men who had their best interests in mind. In reality, it works more like Chinatown. Set in an L.A. ruled by corruption, deception, and disregard for human life, Roman Polanski’s celebrated 1974 neo-noir has no faith in the system whatsoever. And lest a viewer take refuge in the naive thought that “the system may be broken, but people are good deep down,” amoral private eye J.J. Gitties (Jack Nicholson) uncovers shocking personal secrets as well as political ones in his quest to expose the invisible levers of power in the city. This capitalist noose-tightening is how the West was really won — although the film is set in 1937, it was inspired by the real-life “water wars” of the early 20th century. And while its worldview may be bleak, at least it’s honest. —K.R.

‘Moonlight’ (2016)

It’s impossible to separate this Oscar-winner from the political landscape in which it was released: Opening just a few weeks before Donald Trump’s election, Barry Jenkins’ deeply compassionate story of a young Black man’s quest to embrace his sexuality felt like a bulwark against the cruelty festering across the country. Playing Chiron during three crucial moments in his life, a trio of actors — Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes — tackle the homophobia and racism that bedevil America, with their quiet sighs and resigned eyes accruing a cumulative emotional weight that honors the myriad of stories that so rarely get told in Hollywood films. Indeed, to see Moonlight is to be forced to reckon with this nation’s heart of darkness, but also to marvel at the individuals who find their way to transcendence anyway. That’s not the rosy vision most people want to have of America, but this cinematic stunner suggests it’s the harsh, inequitable world that too many of our countrymen and women recognize all too well. —T.G.

‘The Godfather’ (1972)

“I believe in America.” From that opening line, Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic announces itself as first and foremost a story about immigration, centering on a family that was denied access to the American dream, so they had to forge an illegitimate path instead. For all the power Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) wields from the shadows, his entire empire is devoted to making sure his children can live in the light. Though Coppola delivers on the gruesome pulp of Mario Puzo’s novel, his aversion to making a gangster film is precisely what makes The Godfather the greatest gangster film of them all. The tragedy of the Corleones is shared by all immigrants stranded in a country that fails to live up to its promises. —S.T.

‘Nashville’ (1975)

Has there ever been a more sprawling, shaggy, tragicomic portrait of the American experiment than Robert Altman’s musical mural of a movie? Made a year before our country’s bicentennial (and before we’d send a peanut farmer from the deep south to the White House), his ensemble piece about a bunch of disparate characters colliding into each other in the epicenter of country music is only partially about the city of the title. Yes, it’s hard to think of another place so associated with a specific art form (unless you count Hollywood), and Nashville’s spirit-of-’75 mix of Grand Ole Opry legends, old-time-religion practitioners, sensitive singer-songwriters, wannabe stars, hippies, conservatives and kitschy Americana is a perfect recipe for a rich commentary stew. The filmmaker had already pioneered a loosey-goosey way of recording that allowed for his cast to simultaneously share space on the soundtrack, and with this ambitious epic, he makes room for every voice sing. And scream. And say the most darnedest faux-folksy and off-the-cuff profound things.

The real subject isn’t just the Tennessee hot spot and home to Music Row, of course, but the union it’s part of. We’re a nation of superfans and superfreaks, hypocrites and holy rollers, kooks and assassins — Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury didn’t need weathermen to know which way the wind was blowing. There’s a place at the table for Ronee Blakly’s beloved Barbara Jean, a woman singing about down-home life while on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Ned Beatty’s opportunistic huckster, and Keith Carradine’s straight-outta-Laurel-Canyon Lothario, and Jeff Goldblum’s easy rider. Not to mention a disturbed young man toting around a violin case. Even before the climactic rally for the rogue “Replacement Party” Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker, the lines between politics and entertainment and violence in this side-eye glance at the U.S. of A. were already so blurry. They’re even blurrier now. Nashville begins with someone crooning how America must be doing something right if we’d been around 200 years. It ends someone onstage, standing next to a pool of blood, belting out “You may say I ain’t free/but it don’t worry me.” The gap between those two sentiments is the longitude and latitude where you find our cockeyed nation on the map. —D.F.