ten movies about america

[rone]

dr_strych9 lists 10 films he'd use to explain America.  Here's mine:

• The Blues Brothers
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Network
• The Apostle
• Nobody's Fool
• Bob Roberts
• Fargo
• The Rookie
• X
• Deliverance

Nota bene: i haven't seen "The Rookie" or "Deliverance", but i'm acquainted enough with the stories that i'm confident about their appearance here.

Comments

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

No Woody Allen?
No Tim Burton?
No Westerns?
No Documentaries?
No gangster movies?
No Repo Man?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Woody Allen stopped being America in the `80s.

Tim Burton? AAHAHAHAHAHAno. OK, i liked how dr_strych9 justified Mars Attacks!, but it's still not something i'd show someone else to represent America, especially when Dr. Strangelove does it much better.

Westerns stopped being America long ago.

I don't know documentaries very well, and they seem so narrow that i can't think of one i'd use to represent America.

Gangster movies are entertaining but, again, not what i see of America, excepting possibly Godfather I/II.

I still haven't seen Repo Man.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Let me recommend Living Dolls (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0285298/).

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

When i'm president, i am outlawing child beauty pageants.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Alas, when child beauty pageants are outlawed only outlaws will have child beauty pageants.

It's a difficult thing to watch, but it does a better job of taking a snapshot of a particular corner of America than anything I've seen elsewhere. There are single moms, gay men, curiously absent family members, etc. And of course a complete absence of irony.

Oh, and if I recall correctly it's set in some corner of the South; it'll tell you more about the contemporary South than will Deliverance, Gone With The Wind, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

YOU MUST SEE REPO MAN

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

"A Repo Man Has A Code Of Conduct"

The single most important line, EVER!!!

[venividi.livejournal.com]

Westerns may have stopped being American, by three movies that taken as a trilogy do a great job of summing up america are

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Once Upon a Time in the West

and

The Hallelujah Trail

Go see Repo Man, soonest.