# What are your American Movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 18, 2004, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327 "2004-08-18T01:12:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/21 "2004-08-18T06:02:53Z")
_ **All the President’s Men** _ Right? ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/22 "2004-08-18T06:07:19Z")
Repo Man ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/23 "2004-08-18T06:56:17Z")
> [@Mockingbird](#): > > Pleasantville is about that mythic America that never existed but the extreme right wing is trying to ‘return us’ to. And I recommend its counterbalance BLAST FROM THE PAST. My own recommendations- IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE HIGH NOON THE FOUNTAINHEAD NIGHT OF THE HUNTER ---
**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/24 "2004-08-18T08:06:25Z")
[QUOTE=The Scrivener] Key omissions: Kansas City (MO), Memphis, Atlanta (something other than GWTW?), Colorado, Arizona, Maine, Key West, Alaska, Hawaii, the Rockies, and a good movie set around the Grand Canyon (Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon” doesn’t cut it). [QUOTE] Let me take a crack at some of these: Arizona: _Tombstone_ Kansas City: _Five and Ten_ Maine: _The Shawshank Redemption_ Colorado: _The Shining_ Atlanta: _Driving Miss Daisy_ Alaska: _The Gold Rush_, or if you don’t want a silent, _Limbo_ Key West: _Running Scared_ Hawaii: _Tora, Tora, Tora_ or _Lilo and Stitch_ Rockies: See Colorado Grand Canyon: _Thelma and Louise_ is the best I can come up with. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/25 "2004-08-18T08:26:16Z")
Any the Coen brothers pictures would be good: _Blood Simple_: Texas _Raising Arizona_: Trailer homes _Miller’s Crossing_: Gangsters _Barton Fink_: Hollywood _Hudsucker Proxy_: Horatio Alger _Fargo_: Hawaii _The Big Lebowski_: Vietnam vets, Fading hippies _O Brother Where Art Thou_: The Depression, folk music _Intolerable Cruelty_: Er… George Clooney? _The Ladykillers_: Pointless remakes Okay, maybe stop after _O Brother_. (Haven’t seen _The Man Who Wasn’t There_) ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/26 "2004-08-18T13:04:21Z")
_Glory The Patriot Pearl Harbor_ ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/27 "2004-08-18T14:02:24Z")
Tremors Tombstone Major League Saving Private Ryan Groundhog Day Raiders of the Lost Ark ---
**Author:** ![Kaspar\_Hauser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@Kaspar\_Hauser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaspar_Hauser)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/28 "2004-08-18T15:42:31Z")
_1776 Yankee Doodle Dandy Gone With The Wind Pulp Fiction GoodFellas_ Any Marx Brothers movies ---
**Author:** ![TitoBenito](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2acd7d/32.png) [@TitoBenito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TitoBenito)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/29 "2004-08-18T15:45:14Z")
Wait till you get to China. You can get all those movies there for a dollar. The pirate stores have a better selection than most blockbusters. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/30 "2004-08-18T16:05:33Z")
_American Graffiti_ ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/31 "2004-08-18T16:26:33Z")
The Rocketeer. “I may not make an honest buck, but I’m an American, god dammit…” ---
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/32 "2004-08-18T16:29:47Z")
I second Tremors but I have to add the 2nd and the 4th to that. I can live without the 3rd. Dogma Scrooged The Wizard of Oz. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/33 "2004-08-18T16:37:50Z")
Blues Brothers Fame ---
**Author:** ![Medea\_s\_Child](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Medea\_s\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Medea_s_Child)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/34 "2004-08-18T18:03:19Z")
Some of these movies I have, some of them I have on my wish list, and some have made me gasp with joy “How could I have missed that one?!”. Admittedly, there are a few I’m going to skip forever. (_Pearl Harbor_, only mentioned by my American Way of War prof as “That damn movie”, for instance.) I know that I can probably pick up more from a pirate shop in China, but I’m iffy on the practice, and they are going to be my “security blanket” from home. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/35 "2004-08-18T19:36:20Z")
Based on the OP, I’m interpreting the request as looking for movies by Americans about what they think the American experience is about. And for that, I’m going to suggest _Moscow on the Hudson._ Okay, it’s not a great movie. Robin Williams’s Russian accent is mediocre at best, and watching Maria Conchita Alonso trying to play Italian is pretty painful. But think about the story: A Russian circus performer defects in New York City, in Bloomingdale’s no less. (The movie was made in the mid-80s.) The Bloomie’s security guard offers to take the defector into his own house until he has a place to stay. (Notably, this all happens on television.) The Russian defector comes face to face with the famed American excess and has to learn to cope (he collapses in the grocery store on being confronted with the variety of brands of coffee). He moves through a series of jobs, working variously as a dishwasher, a limo driver, and so on. Virtually everybody he runs into is from someplace else, such as his immigration attorney (from Cuba) and the government worker his attorney argues with (she has a Jamaican accent). America is portrayed as being big, boisterous, confusing, and occasionally dangerous, but essentially good at heart. And at the end, we get an amazingly schlocky scene where a bunch of immigrants quote the Constitution (or is it the Declaration of Independence?) at one another. Like I said, not a particularly good movie, but I can’t think of a better example of a feel-good film that captures exactly what America thinks of itself and how it believes it would (or should) be viewed by a new arrival to its shores. “We may not be perfect,” says the movie, “but we beat the hell out of everywhere else.” That’s a quintessentially American point of view, and _Moscow on the Hudson_ conveys it better, I think, than any other movie in memory. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/36 "2004-08-18T20:26:34Z")
Howzabout two Presidential movies: _Dick Dave_ ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/37 "2004-08-18T20:50:11Z")
The Big Lebowski The Searchers Brother From Another Planet Dawn of the Dead (70’s version) Heavy Metal Parking Lot Invasion of the Body Snatchers (50’s version) Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure Scarface Repoman Roger & Me But then again, I’m not American 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/38 "2004-08-18T20:58:37Z")
Airplane Animal House Blues Brothers Caddyshack Happy Gilmore Miracle - (About as American as you can get…) ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/39 "2004-08-18T21:03:05Z")
Oh, and just about any [John Wayne movie](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000078/) … ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2004, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327/40 "2004-08-18T23:00:56Z")
> [@The Scrivener](#): > > Fargo – Fargo, N.D. Not to get nitpicky (which means I’m about to get nitpicky), but the vast majority of **Fargo** takes place in Brainerd, MN and the Twin Cities. The only scene to actually take place in Fargo, ND is the initial meeting between Jerry Lundegaard and the kidnappers. After the first five or so minutes, the rest takes place in Minnesota. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-american-movies/260327.md?page=3)