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The Most Totally American Movies Ever: Our Top 9
Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central
Happy 232nd birthday, America! Along with baseball, Britney and oh so many flavors of Doritos, you've given the world an uncountable wealth of movies to enjoy. On this momentous holiday weekend, let's focus on nine films that most fully embody the American spirit, plus a 10th to be determined by E! Online readers. (See, that's some freedom of choice right there!)
O say can you see...our list:
1. Die Hard: Our boy Bruce Willis leaps across five decades of American Westerns in a single "yippee-ki-yay, motherf--ker." The lone hero, the Twinkie-gobbling cop, the terrorist Eurotrash...it's all there.
2. The Godfather: Part II: As if crafting the best-ever American crime drama weren't enough, Coppola ups the ante?and anoints the blockbuster sequel?with an immigrant backstory, drugs, gambling and primo De Niro.
3. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: Crude, lowbrow Internet vid grows up to become crude, lowbrow animated epic. Saddam Hussein canoodles with Satan. "Blame Canada" earns an Oscar nod. U-S-A!
4. Do the Right Thing: Vibrant New York streets, simmering racial tension and a huge friggin' radio. As complicated as America's real-life race relations and as effective as a pummeling Public Enemy track.
5. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg spun a Disney-style parable into a sci-fi classic with kickass effects, intrepid suburban kids and a killer product placement for Reese's. America cried in its popcorn.
6. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle: Postmodern stoner epic puts the "bud" back in buddy pic. Slider-seeking antiheroes shirk the dull expectations of a morally bankrupt society and party with Doogie Howser.
7. Titanic: How much to turn a harrowing maritime disaster into a three-hour Celine Dion video starring Billy Zane? Only $200 million? Sold! Only the planet's hottest capitalist democracy could produce this so-bad-it's-Best-Picture masterwork.
8. Friday Night Lights: If this emotionally charged ode to high school football in western Texas doesn't get your Yankee heart pumping, you're probably already on a Homeland Security watch list.
9. Forrest Gump: This much is true: Tom Hanks is America. Gump crystallizes U.S. propensity to put oneself at the center of every important cultural moment. Also the film that launched a thousand real-life shrimp restaurants.
10. [YOUR CHOICE HERE]: What, no Terminator? No Tom Cruise? Do Girls Gone Wild videos count?! Cast your vote in the comments for the red-white-and-bluest movie you've ever seen.
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