“The Hollywood Reporter” put together a list of 25 movies that explain the American soul. These are movies that, quote, “communicate the nation’s essential traits, the psychic weirdness, [and] the messy contradictions.”
Not sure you know what that means? I can’t say they did, either. But either way, their top pick was the Matthew Broderick / Reese Witherspoon comedy “Election”.
Here’s their Top 10:
1. “Election” (1999): “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.”
2. “Get Out” (2017): “You could vote for Obama for a third term and still perpetuate a toxic game, and no injection entered this cultural nerve better than ‘Get Out’.”
3. “Idiocracy” (2006): “When we look at demographic shifts, stoner laziness, a disintegrating discourse and a country buckling under its own pandering stupidity, how can you disagree?”
4. “Easy Rider” (1969): “Never before in cinema and perhaps never again since has a piece of entertainment captured the pure American thrill of going your own way.”
5. “Chan Is Missing” (1982): “A pair of everyday scrappers trying to solve the mystery of the Chinese-American experience . . . the real search is for a sense of belonging, and whether this country delivers it.”
6. “Uncut Gems” (2019): “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.”
7. “The Incredibles” (2004): “People think of this Pixar classic as a brilliant riff on the superhero story, and it is, but really it’s an inquiry into how we’ve been living.”
8. “The Searchers” (1956) and “Django Unchained” (2012): “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?”
9. “Sugar” (2008): “Chronicles a character who doesn’t get anything he wants but still ends up with pretty much everything he needs . . . a capsizing of the American Dream right into welcomingly warm waters just the same.”
10. “Erin Brockovich” (2000): “Julia 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.”
Other movies that made the list include “The Social Network”, “Rocky 3”, “Ghostbusters”, “Borat”, “The Godfather”, “On the Waterfront”, “Sorry to Bother You” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.