I asked that question yesterday on Facebook and got more than 50 responses. These were the movies with more than three votes.

Movie	Votes
Citizen Kane	7
The Godfather	6
The Grapes of Wrath	5
Idiocracy (!)	5
The Best Years of Our Lives	4
The Right Stuff	4

I kept categorizing all the different suggestions in my mind:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses:

• The Godfather
• Scarface (1982)

We're better than our PR:

• The Right Stuff
• Singin' in the Rain

Truth, justice and the American way

• Rambo
• Rocky V
• Rudy
• Superman

Something is disappearing (Tony Soprano's lament):

• American Graffiti
• Breaking Away
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• High Noon

Something's wrong here, not sure what it is:

• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Being There
• Five Easy Pieces
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Parallax View
• Poltergeist (“It's all in the subtext”)
• Rebel without a Cause

We venture out to go home:

• Apocalypse Now
• Apollo 13
• Citizen Kane
• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
• Sullivan's Travels
• The Wizard of Oz

We're fucked:

• Idiocracy

I also got many complaints that it was an impossible question. “You have to be more specific,” one said. “There's no such thing as an All-American movie,” another said.

But that's the point, isn't it? Since America isn't more specific.

But this was my favorite response, via Twitter:

@ErikLundegaard Nothing says “America” like Apocalypse Now.

— Jason Lamb (@KarlShowJason) July 3, 2013

Happy 4th.

We came.

We soared.

We watched TV.

Posted at 08:29 AM on Thu. Jul 04, 2013 in category Movies  
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