The Historical View
Reader submissions were light on documentaries or history-based fiction. Ken Burns’s work came up several times, but opinions didn’t coalesce around any specific title. The Vietnam War as a backdrop (“Apocalypse Now” and “The Deer Hunter”) was noted in different ways. The musical “1776” was cited more than 20 times, and (warming this journalist’s heart) so was “All the President’s Men,” the Watergate investigation docudrama.
The Hits
Perhaps unsurprisingly, recommendations skewed toward popular, long-established films with indelible performances (“Chinatown,” “Forrest Gump”). But memories are long, and readers reached back to the 1930s (“The Wizard of Oz”) and ’40s (“The Best Years of Our Lives,” “Citizen Kane”) for several picks.
The Surprises
“Breaking Away,” a 1979 sleeper about townies in the college town of Bloomington, Ind., was mentioned more than a handful of times for its sense of place and of working-class lives. And what passion for “The Sandlot,” the 1993 coming-of-age tale of young boys and baseball! Readers zeroed in on its idealism and haves-vs.-have-nots subtext.
Conversely, I thought straightforward westerns would make a strong showing, but while several did merit a comment (“How the West Was Won,” the Coen brothers’ “True Grit”), consensus on any one title never emerged.
The Miscellaneous
Films that came up more than once that made for interesting discussion included “Avalon,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Independence Day,” “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Office Space,” “Rocky” and “Train Dreams.”
One Last Word
When I was putting together the initial story and asked the writer Melena Ryzik what she thought the definitive American movie was, she responded instantly: “Of course it’s ‘Dirty Dancing.’” No hesitation, no room for doubt. That’s the way it was with some commenters. The many votes for “Idiocracy” were accompanied with remarks like “hands down” and “no question.” One writer declared that nothing more perfectly fit the bill than the sci-fi thriller “RoboCop.” Then there was the commentator who argued that the answer was obviously the 1998 disaster picture “Armageddon.” Of course.
