{"id":2786,"date":"2026-06-30T14:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2786"},"modified":"2026-06-30T14:08:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:08:45","slug":"the-top-25-movies-that-explain-the-american-soul-ranked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2786","title":{"rendered":"The Top 25 Movies That Explain the American Soul, Ranked"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tFor a country that\u2019s been around for a quarter of a millennium, America is pretty dynamic. Politics, fashion, culture and other realms change states faster than a microwavable dinner. Which, incidentally, was\u00a0all the rage in the 1980s\u00a0and now is most popularly known\u00a0as a\u00a0Roblox\u00a0game.<\/p>\n<p>That makes pinning down something like the American psyche a tricky game. Some films try to tell the tale via U.S. history, like\u00a0<em>Lincoln<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>Selma<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>Born on the Fourth of July.<\/em>\u00a0Others opt for immigration stories\u00a0like\u00a0<em>Avalon\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>Minari<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>In America. <\/em>Worthy efforts, all. But many of those films tackle explicitly American notions of government or principles or ideals. <\/p>\n<p>An equally (more?) accurate cinematic version of America may be one that doesn\u2019t contemplate America at all. It knows not from the 25th Amendment or a Second Constitutional Convention; it doesn\u2019t think much about the White House or Ellis Island. In fact, the country itself may not even be mentioned. These characters simply live in America, doing something that captures the American condition in all its hustle and heartbreak \u2014 its beautiful tragedies and inescapable ironies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One way to think about it would be if you were using movies to explain America. If you were teaching a class of schoolchildren you\u2019d show them explicitly U.S.-preoccupied films like\u00a0<em>Lincoln<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>Selma<\/em>. But what if you were talking to someone who\u2019d never heard of America and who cared little about the idea of government or geographic borders? How would you communicate the place\u2019s essential traits, the psychic weirdness, the messy contradictions \u2014 what movies would you tell them about\u00a0<em>then<\/em>? Such are the criteria we used in devising this ranking of films about the American condition. Not the country\u2019s history or institutions but the ineffable qualities of living here \u2014 a lot less <em>Mr. Smith Goes to Washington<\/em>\u00a0and a lot more S<em>orry to Bother You<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>With the nation\u2019s 250th birthday upon us this July 4th, here are the top 25 movies about the American psyche.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2784\">U.K. Government Likely to Intervene in Paramount\u2019s Warner Bros. Discovery Takeover<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(John Hughes, 1986)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cLife moves pretty fast. If you don\u2019t stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it.\u201d Has any character in the history of American cinema better captured this country\u2019s ethos? Hungry for experience and eager to cut corners, Ferris\u00a0<em>is\u00a0<\/em>America, a self-conception (and self-own) in movie form. Always hustling, often putting one over on people, but so lovable he just might get away with it. Many films tried before and no doubt many will continue to try, but for capitalism\u2019s full-court charisma press, nothing will compete with what Ferris, Cameron and Sloane did that magical Chicago day. Swing battah battah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Don\u2019t Look Back<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tA half-generation before, another wan dreamer was putting over his own beautiful hustle and vibe-shifting the culture \u00a0around him in the process. Pennebaker\u2019s groundbreaking verite about Bob Dylan, trailing the Hibbing Bard on a 1965 tour of England, didn\u2019t try to explain what we were seeing, just let us Rorschach our way to our chosen meaning. Whether it was Dylan sparring with a science student or singing Hank in a hotel room, playing Royal Albert Hall or just solicitously presenting those cue cards for\u00a0<em>Subterranean Homesick Blues,<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<em>Don\u2019t Look Back<\/em>\u00a0captures our national lashout at an unjust status quo with unique perspicacity. Kurt Cobain called Pennebaker\u2019s film the only \u201cgood documentary about rock and roll,\u201d which also makes it the best film about a defining American art form.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>On the Waterfront\u00a0<\/em>and <em>There Will Be Blood<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Elia Kazan, 1954, and Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhat is the meaning of success, and what are the right ways to get it? What is the line between hustle and unethical behavior, and does the universe correctly sort \u00a0between them? Both Kazan and Anderson grapple with these quintessential, generationally transcending American questions through two characters living in two different worlds a half-century apart, one wildly successful in his greedy milkshake-drinking and the other left simpering that he coulda been a contender. Whether Daniel Plainview is wailing on Eli Sunday or Terry Malloy is wailing to his brother Charlie, the films depict unadorned American greed, its undeniability and its victims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Sorry to Bother You<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Boots Riley, 2018)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt has two lead characters named Cash and Squeeze, and that\u2019s just the start of it. Riley\u2019s masterpiece has become a cult classic in the eight years since it premiered at Sundance, and it probably\u00a0<em>still<\/em>\u00a0hasn\u2019t achieved the peak of its popularity. The scifi-ish story about a near-future of call centers and racial cosplaying manages to tackle power, race, economics, social justice \u2014 the whole lot of it \u2014 but in such an enjoyably weird way you need to see it multiple times to grasp all the layers. Even the title works on a meta level, doubling up the call-center intro with directorial faux non-apology about disturbing our complacency. If you want to understand both the country\u2019s everyday ironies and the precarious hot mess it has gotten itself into, you could take five classes and read 10 academic histories. Or you can just watch\u00a0<em>Sorry to Bother You<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Furious 7<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(James Wan, 2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tThey spend most of the movie in Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi \u2014 or, more accurately, flying in cars above them \u2014 but Dom and the gang and indeed a 21st-century Hollywood action-movie producer may have never told a more American tale. The sheer nothing\u2019s-impossible glee; the brotherhood between them, even amid impossible (and implausible) circumstances. The film was marred by the death of star Paul Walker in the middle of production, but in true indefatigable American spirit, the show went on, and in even truer indefatigable American spirit used body doubles of Walker\u2019s own brothers to do it. \u201cHow can we not talk about family when family is all that we got,\u201d the movie\u2019s sappy-but-effective theme song (which also gave us national treasure Charlie Puth) asked us. Indeed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em> There It Is<\/em> and <em>Arizona Dream<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Harold L. Muller, 1928, and Emir Kusturica, 1993)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWild dreaming is at the heart of America; after all, that\u2019s how the country got here. Two movies separated by an era capture this tendency to reverie in exciting, enlivening and, OK, confounding ways. In the 1920\u2019s a British detective comes to New York to investigate a \u201cphantom \u201cthat causes pots to dance, pants to come off and full chickens to hatch; in the 1990\u2019s a New York fish-tagger (played by a young Johnny Depp!) comes to Arizona to meet a woman who dreams of building a \u201cflying machine\u201d while her stepdaughter dreams of turtle reincarnation. Both movies are as enigmatic as they are thrilling, and ask a foundational American question: who\u2019s to say that one person\u2019s vivid imagination isn\u2019t tomorrow\u2019s accepted reality?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Buffalo \u201866<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Vincent Gallo, 1998<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>\n\tManic, opportunistic , lovable, infuriating \u2014 when Gallo\u2019s recently released convict goes on an ecstatic road trip with a kidnapped Christina Ricci, he exemplifies what has been an American trait that cinema from Westerns to indies have long captured: the stubborn romantic need to find something better, often on the road (and an obliviousness to how we interfere with our own goal). But the most perfectly American part of the film may be Anjelica Huston\u2019s scene-steal, as years later she watches Scott Noorwood\u2019s missed field goal in the 1991 Super Bowl again and again, unable to move on from a past and yet retaining a durable optimism that, somehow, this time time it\u2019ll all be different.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The American President<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Rob Reiner, 1996)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tOK, so we said no American history movies. But technically this isn\u2019t about anything that<em> actually<\/em> <em>happened.<\/em> Also, at the heart of America is is well, a heart, and this romcom between Michael Douglas and Annette Benning has it in spades. Aaron Sorkin\u2019s script about a widowed president trying to balance foreign-policy decisions, Congressional maneuvering and a date at a French state dinner may seem like a pretty glossed version of real life in this country. But at its humanist essence,\u00a0<em>The American President\u00a0<\/em>is just a shinier spin on the trying-to-have-it-all movie, the answer to the a question so many Americans ask at the end of the day: Can I be happy at both work and in relationships?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The Godfather<\/em> and <em>The People vs. Larry Flynt<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Frances Ford Coppola, 1972, and Milos Forman, 1996)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhen can films about a mob boss and a pornography trial a quarter-century apart tie for the same slot? When they\u2019re about two men with an empire, a vision and, most important, an oddly ennobled vulgarity. No one would confuse either Don Corleone or Larry Flynt with actual heroes. And yet \u2026 the two men uphold a certain shaggy standard. Despite no tangible evidence that either of them are enriching society, they each embody the same uniquely American idea: if you conduct business with a kind of principled consistency, we\u2019ll love you no matter what that business is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The Best Years of Our Lives<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(William Wyler, 1946)<br \/><\/strong><br \/>So many directors have tackled the brutality of American war \u2014\u00a0sadly they have many to choose from \u2014 but far fewer have imagined what happens upon soldiers\u2019 return. Wyler\u2019s post-WWII classic examines that specific dynamic, with a whole generation triumphant but adrift. The United States, it turns out, may valorize service, but it has failed to figure out what to do with those who\u2019ve completed the mission. When Fred Derry tells his fianc\u00e9e, \u201cYou know what it\u2019ll be, don\u2019t you, Peggy? It may take us years to get anywhere. We\u2019ll have no money, no decent place to live. We\u2019ll have to work, get kicked around,\u201d\u00a0the film\u2019s ending captures a hopelessness that has been with America since the beginning. And when she warmly accepts him anyway, it evinces an optimism that will never go away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Larry Charles, 2006)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWho knew that all it would take to understand the corroded and at times hypocritical heart of America was a series of over-the-top cringe-comedy set pieces from a Brit impersonating a Kazakh while speaking Hebrew? OK, so anyone who watched\u00a0<em>Da Al G Show<\/em>\u00a0might have put the pieces together. But the audiences that flocked to this pre-social media viral sensation were laughing at what they watched, convinced they were seeing a distant comedy and not a slightly distorted mirror. The film took some shortcuts and played fast and loose even with candid-camera and selective-editing etiquette so it could show the country at its most jingoistic, tribal and senseless. But from the vantage point of 2026, can you blame it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em> and <em>Ghostbusters<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Stanley Kubrick, 1968, and Ivan Reitman, 1984)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWill science save or destroy us? Should we try to understand every last bit of the universe or accept there is that which we cannot fathom? Baked into the American experience is a rigorous rationalism, a dogged worldview that all can be understood and solved. Yet equally pervasive are spiritual and supernatural beliefs, the idea\u00a0that something hovers that<em> can\u2019t <\/em>be understood. Kubrick juxtaposed these opposites as astronaut David Bowman comes upon mysterious astral phenomena that can\u2019t be explained and may or may not have something to do with him. Some 15 years later (and with a lot more pop comedy), Reitman picked up the conversation, asking if there are paranormal phenomena we can\u2019t apprehend and if Proton Packs can be useful upon encountering them. An ideology of science constrained by an acknowledgement of the supernatural is as American as tensions get, and both films colorfully find their way to portraying it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Slacker <\/em>and<em> Reality Bites<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Richard Linklater, 1991, and Ben Stiller, 1994)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know it\u2019s kinda disgusting but it\u2019s like, it\u2019s sort of, like, getting down to the real Madonna\u201d and \u201cYou look like \u2026 a doily\u201d \u2014 two of the more quotable modern-movie lines, both uttered by twentysomethings trying to figure out life and everything in early-1990\u2019s Texas. Watching them now, Linklater\u2019s discursive gem and Stiller\u2019s class dramedy feel almost quaint, snapshots of a moment when\u00a0earnestness still reigned and the the Internet, well, didn\u2019t. But for all of its historical specificity, the striving of these characters spans American generations, engaging with a theme that will never go out of style: what the hell is my role in this vast land?<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2782\">Meg Donnelly Signs With WME in All Areas (Exclusive)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Rocky III<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Sylvester Stallone, 1982)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tYes, we could have gone with the first\u00a0<em>Rocky<\/em>, about an underdog working-class spirit that captures a part of the national psyche. Or\u00a0<em>Rocky IV,<\/em>\u00a0which is about a more literalized patriotic pluck in the face of an indomitable Cold War machine (ah, for the days of Cold War underdoggery). But for something that truly captures the neon splotches of the American soul \u2014 the excesses and the crassness and our love-hate relationship with all of it \u2014 nothing compares to\u00a0<em>Rocky III.<\/em>\u00a0Hulk Hogan appears early, Mr. T appears later. As the cartoonishly brutal Clubber Lang \u2014 no \u201cPity the Fool\u201d campiness here \u2014 T kills Rocky\u2019s beloved manager, then destroys the boxer (wealthy and complacent) in the ring, prompting a rematch at Madison Square Garden. If the movie\u2019s taste for subtle understatement wasn\u2019t already clear, Rocky rival Apollo Creed becomes his coach and lends him a pair of talisman American-flag shorts. Also, the\u00a0<em>sine qua non<\/em>\u00a0of American rave-up anthems,\u00a0\u201cEye of the Tiger.\u201d By the time Rocky is raining down punches on Lang to end the movie, you feel pummeled yourself, bruised with the distinct black-and-blue marks of American violence and gaucheness that nonetheless make you feel strangely at home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The Social Network<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(David Fincher, 2010)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tMark Zuckerberg acting narcissistically to create and conquer an industry is a a pretty good metaphor for what Silicon Valley did to America. It also may be a pretty good metaphor for what America did to the world. You need a certain amount of self-delusion to believe you could dominate what you have no right dominating. Aaron Sorkin\u2019s classically rapid-fire script, Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s classically twitchy performance and Armie Hammer\u2019s classic double-duty as the Winklevoss twins all work so effectively on an individual-drama level we can forget what they\u2019re saying about the nation as a whole. But as a movie that demonstrates how an ethos gobbled up a country, none did it as well, or as presciently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Erin Brockovich<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Steven Soderbergh, 2000)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIf Zuck showed America\u2019s lust, Erin showed its conscience. Indignant, crass, moral-compassed and unstoppable \u2014 you could argue that the titular legal battler, with her quest to hold a big corporation accountable for groundwater contamination, is the defining cinematic superhero of the century, all apologies to the MCU. That she was played by Julia Roberts only adds to the magic, America\u2019s Sweetheart as America\u2019s Warrior.\u00a0Years later, the archetype would mutate into that distinctly American stereotype of the Karen \u2014 the complainer who doesn\u2019t like how equity is affecting her. But Roberts showed what a malcontent, and a country, can become when oriented to nobler points: a place where one person, armed with nothing more than chutzpah and morality, can change the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Sugar<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe know we said no immigrant movies, but we need to make an exception for this one. This sly drama about a Dominican baseball prodigy on a Kansas City minor league team could have been a fish-out-of-water comedy, or a bootstrapping tale of outsider success. Instead, the indie masters Boden and Fleck have something subtler and more human on their mind, chronicling a character who doesn\u2019t get anything he wants but still ends up with pretty much everything he needs \u2014 a capsizing of the American Dream right into welcomingly warm waters just the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The Searchers <\/em>and<em> Django Unchained<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(John Ford, 1956, and Quentin Tarantino, 2012)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Plenty of Westerns only go saloon-deep on American themes. Plenty of Westerns are not these two films. Set on either side of the Civil War,\u00a0<em>Searchers<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Django <\/em>each use revenge and obsession as their emotional coin, and each ask the same set of questions about this country: What is the racism that infused the nation in its inchoate stages and how much have we truly gotten past it today? Both use larger-than-life stars convinced of the righteousness of their quest, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) and Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), neither challenging the colonial and racist impulses that animate them. Both films also faced controversy over allegedly glorifying the bigotry they sought to critique, but a close reading shows a message more measured \u2014 and an America that can be anything but.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>The Incredibles<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Brad Bird, 2004)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cEveryone\u2019s special, Dash.\u201d \u201cWhich is another way of saying no one is.\u201d Bird\u2019s iconic exchange in <em>The Incredibles <\/em>highlights a movie that\u2019s about childraising in modern America \u2014 along with other big themes like the impulse to help vs the temptation to stay home, the scale and limits of our abilities, the appeal and perils of suburban conformity and a half-dozen other questions Americans grapple with on the daily. People think of this Pixar classic as a brilliant riff on the superhero story, and it is, but really it\u2019s an inquiry into how we\u2019ve been living.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Uncut Gems<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The mere thought of Adam Sandler phone-walking through the streets of New York\u2019s Diamond District while trying to hustle friends and keep loansharks off his tail may jangle your nerves, and that\u2019s how it should be. The Safdie Bros. designed their final collaboration (for now) to make you feel like you can\u2019t rest because the next possibility lies just around the corner. An homage to their Italian-born immigrant Sephardic father, the movie embodies the beautiful masochistic truth at the heart of this country: to stop striving may be healthy, but it is also un-American.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Chan Is Missing<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Wayne Wang, 1982)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tMost detective stories have police-department veterans trying to find a missing person or item. Wayne Wang\u2019s solo directing debut has a different of case on its mind \u2014 a pair of everyday scrappers trying to solve the mystery of the Chinese-American experience. The black-and-white-noir has cab drivers\u00a0Jo (Wood Moy) and Steve (Marc Hayashi) talking to people in the streets of \u00a0San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown about their disappeared friend Chan Hung. As they get competing views of how Chan experienced America and whether he returned to his birthplace, we realize the real search is for a sense of belonging \u2014 and whether this country delivers it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Easy Rider<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<em><strong>(Dennis Hopper, 1969)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n\tBefore the generational touchstones of\u00a0<em>Slacker<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Girls<\/em>\u00a0and whatever Gen-Z embraces, decades ahead of Curry Barker and Kane Parsons and DIY smashes, came\u00a0<em>Easy Rider<\/em>, a story of Boomer love, drugs and community as the old order topples. Hopper and producer\/co-star Henry Fonda made the movie \u00a0when no one else would, embodying the very outside-the-system ethos contained with it. Never before in cinema and perhaps never again since has a piece of entertainment captured the pure American thrill of going your own way \u2014 has offered an expression of its bedrock tenet that perhaps the best antidotes to a hegemonic conformity are simply friendship, love and a good road trip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Idiocracy<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Mike Judge, 2006)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe\u2019re back in Texas among the underachievers, and it feels like home. Only this time we\u2019re hundreds of years in the future, when a cryogenically awakened Luke Wilson is deemed the smartest man in the world simply for not being born in the present, at a moment when even doctors and judges have been bloodied by the relentless hammer of stupidity. Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen penned their movie mid-George W. Bush administration, playfully extrapolating where that era might go centuries into the future. Who knew we should have bet the under? \u201cIdiocracy is a documentary\u201d is a thought so common these days as to almost lose meaning. And yet when we look at demographic shifts, stoner laziness, a disintegrating discourse and a country buckling under its own pandering stupidity, how can you disagree?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Get Out<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Jordan Peele, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tCan we stuff our ears with cotton or are we all doomed to live in the sunken place? Jordan Peele\u2019s Trump I horror-infused social commentary was the perfect serum for that moment, precipitating and anticipating by three years a long overdue national race reckoning. But the film becomes the embodiment of the American soul by transcending\u00a0that era, capturing a dynamic between white and Black people that, for all the illusion of progress, often has us stuck eating the same bowl of Froot Loops. You could vote for Obama for a third term and still perpetuate a toxic game, and no injection entered this cultural nerve better than <em>Get Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<article>\n<h2><em>Election<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>(Alexander Payne, 1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhat to say about a film that already says it all? The rivalries of high-school, the fight against middle-age ennui, the manipulation of religion, the limits of democracy, the battle between generations, the scheming for power \u2014 if there was one movie you\u2019d send into space or bury in a time capsule so people far away will understand what this country is about, make it the movie about Tracy Flick and her machinations.\u00a0\u201cDear Lord Jesus, I do not often speak with you, but now I really must insist that you help me win the election tomorrow because I deserve it and Paul Metzler doesn\u2019t.\u201d Etch that line on the moon; no film\u00a0distills the American psyche like this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2780\">Bob the Drag Queen, Mon\u00e9t X Change\u2019s \u2018Sibling Rivalry\u2019 Inks Podcast Deal With Libsyn (Exclusive)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 25 best movies that explain the American soul, ranked, in time for July 4th\/Independence Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2127,2128],"class_list":["post-2786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-independence-day"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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