{"id":379150,"date":"2026-06-29T11:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379150\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:12:19","slug":"10-essential-movies-about-a-turbulent-america-at-its-pivot-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379150\/","title":{"rendered":"10 essential movies about a turbulent America at its pivot points"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"america-250-dropcap-c.jpg\" <\/p>\n

Can you tell the story of America in 10 movies? Maybe so \u2014 at least a version of it \u2014 if you stick to moments of serious national friction and those rare instances when a filmmaker meets the mood with a true vision. If you want tearjerkers about red, white and blue triumph, this is not your list (although the Space Race drama \u201cThe Right Stuff\u201d always does the trick). Meanwhile, our current state of disunity and division will find its own expressions in time; start with \u201cCivil War,\u201d<\/a> though it\u2019s a bit too soon. Instead, we thought about historical pivot points and built a list of classics, along with a few alternatives for each title.<\/p>\n

The Great Depression \"Oklahoma <\/p>\n

Henry Fonda, left, in the 1940 film \u201cThe Grapes of Wrath,\u201d directed by John Ford.<\/p>\n

(20th Century-Fox)<\/p>\n

\u2018The Grapes of Wrath\u2019 (1940)<\/p>\n

America is a broken place in John Ford\u2019s poetically charged adaptation of the Steinbeck novel: a downbeat landscape of Oklahoma dust storms, long shadows and the teetering sight of a car turned into a truck transporting a family westward. This will always be one of those essential movies about a particular national dream \u2014 not just a myth \u2014 of emerging from economic catastrophe and being reborn in the promised land of California. Ford, with the instincts of a showman, foregrounded hope on the horizon via inspired performances by Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell\u2019s pragmatic Ma Joad getting the final word (\u201cWe keep a\u2019coming\u2026\u201d). But there is still so much darkness in \u201cThe Grapes of Wrath,\u201d especially in its scenes of John Qualen\u2019s Muley Graves, crumpled on the ground, suddenly a squatter on his own piece of land. He\u2019s no match for the bulldozers. As long as the idea remains that property gets its purpose from those tending it, working it, nourishing it and dying on it, the film will never become a relic. Its binding values of labor and community remain relevant, even if today\u2019s Hollywood rarely speaks to them. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cModern Times,\u201d \u201cSullivan\u2019s Travels,\u201d \u201cBonnie and Clyde\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Post-war optimism \"A <\/p>\n

Michael Hall, from left, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy and Fredric March in the 1946 movie \u201cThe Best Years of Our Lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Samuel Goldwyn Productions)<\/p>\n

\u2018The Best Years of Our Lives\u2019 (1946)<\/p>\n

World War II ended with ticker-tape parades and soaring expectations. William Wyler\u2019s sweeping drama arrived just as America was beginning to reckon with what coming home actually meant. Harold Russell, a real-life veteran who lost both hands during the war, plays a sailor struggling to imagine a future with the woman he loves. Dana Andrews is a decorated bombardier who returns to the same soda fountain job he held before the war, discovering that military heroism doesn\u2019t necessarily translate into peacetime opportunity. The movie became one of the biggest hits of 1946 because it understood a challenge facing millions of Americans: The war had given the country a common purpose but peace meant each person had to find their own. Yet for all its honesty about that dislocation, the film remains remarkably hopeful. Its faith that people can rebuild their lives and start over feels almost radical today. Seen from the distance of eight decades, it feels like a dispatch from a country that had just survived a catastrophe and still believed its best days lay ahead. \u2014 Josh Rottenberg<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life,\u201d \u201cMiracle on 34th Street,\u201d \u201cGiant\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Capitalism, unchecked \"A <\/p>\n

Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2007 movie \u201cThere Will Be Blood,\u201d directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.<\/p>\n

(Paramount Vantage)<\/p>\n

\u2018There Will Be Blood\u2019 (2007)<\/p>\n

\u201cI drink your milkshake \u2014 I drink it up!\u201d Oil man Daniel Plainview\u2019s deranged metaphor, allegedly taken from congressional transcripts from the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall defended the practice of directional oil drilling, a.k.a. drainage, became a catchphrase when \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d arrived in 2007. Elon Musk probably has a T-shirt in the back of a drawer emblazoned with the line. It epitomizes the American ethos of extracting resources that belong to someone else and then brutally bragging about the beatdown. Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s movie is part history lesson, part horror film, which, when it comes to chronicling the American experience, feels like the perfect blend. The oil man\u2019s exploits take place more than a century ago, but seem particularly relevant now with Musk newly minted as the world\u2019s first trillionaire and income inequality rapidly widening. Plainview confesses, \u201cI have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.\u201d It neatly sums up the endgame in which we find ourselves \u2014 and his vanquishing of the preacher Eli speaks to what we worship in the United States. He\u2019s finished and sometimes it feels like we are too. \u2014 Glenn Whipp<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cThe Wolf of Wall Street,\u201d \u201cWALL-E,\u201d \u201cSorry to Bother You\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Post-Vietnam\/Watergate cynicism\u2018Nashville\u2019 (1975) \"A <\/p>\n

Ronee Blakley in the 1975 movie \u201cNashville,\u201d directed by Robert Altman.<\/p>\n

(Paramount Pictures)<\/p>\n

Could one movie capture the breadth of emotions around this year\u2019s 250th anniversary celebrations as well as Robert Altman did the Bicentennial? As the country was still reeling from the assassinations and discord of the 1960s, the despair of Vietnam and the scandals of Nixon and Watergate, there was a soul-baring uncertainty to what it even meant to be an American. With 24 main characters interwoven around the town of Nashville, home of country music and intersecting political undercurrents, the film tries to make sense of the chaos. While the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s are seen as the most direct response to the moral malaise of the moment, Altman finds an unexpected way to gild his innate skepticism with a light filigree of hope, a complex quilt of characters capturing the contradictions inherent in the American identity. And yet as cynical and beaten-down as the film\u2019s viewpoint can often be, there is still a spark of decency and perseverance. That is the America that Altman celebrates, even as he lets no one off the hook. Few films capture the hum of life in all its maddening beauty quite like this one. \u2014 Mark Olsen<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cBlow Out,\u201d \u201cThe Conversation,\u201d \u201cThe Parallax View\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" \u2018Network\u2019 (1976) \"An <\/p>\n

Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and William Holden in the 1976 movie \u201cNetwork,\u201d directed by Sidney Lumet.<\/p>\n

(MGM Studios \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Much has been made over the years about how prescient this film was, as if screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and director Sidney Lumet saw the constrictive dangers of corporate consolidation in the distance and came back to warn us. But if these rumbling premonitions have remained true across multiple eras of an ever-evolving media landscape, have we really learned anything? Perhaps we really do live in a \u201cdemented slaughterhouse of a world,\u201d as the unhinged newsman Howard Beale says in one of his apocalyptic broadcasts, and have all along. Maybe what \u201cNetwork\u201d nails most of all is apathy: that even the most righteously committed can have their heads turned from their true goals and then struggle to get back on track. What may be most shocking rewatching the film today is the suspicion that some current media figures see the maneuverings of villainous executives played by Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway and somehow think that they were the heroes of the story all along. Not even Lumet or Chayefsky would have predicted that. \u2014 Mark Olsen<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cBroadcast News,\u201d \u201cThe Insider,\u201d \u201cNightcrawler\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Gentrification and racial tensions \"A <\/p>\n

Spike Lee, left, and Danny Aiello in the 1989 movie \u201cDo the Right Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u2018Do the Right Thing\u2019 (1989)<\/p>\n

Spike Lee\u2019s masterpiece was met with hand-wringing when it arrived in theaters 37 summers ago, with white critics fretting how \u201curban audiences\u201d would react to its shocking ending of brutality and angry protest. \u201cIf some audiences go wild, [Lee] is partly responsible,\u201d critic David Denby wrote in New York Magazine. Nobody rioted. \u201cDo the Right Thing\u201d made some people uncomfortable because it told truths from a Black perspective that they did not want to accept. That unwillingness to have hard conversations and learn from them remains evident today as we prepare to celebrate our nation\u2019s 250th birthday without an honest reckoning of the anguish that lies beneath the storybook version of America\u2019s founding. The paradox is that Lee\u2019s movie is itself that conversation, its characters engaging in a series of arguments, evenhanded and empathetic, about how race affects the lives we lead in America. Until our country engages in that dialogue, nothing will change. For a moment, the Black Lives Matter movement signaled a willingness to grapple with the past. But the pendulum swung and we\u2019re back to days of \u201cDriving Miss Daisy\u201d denial. But \u201cDo the Right Thing\u201d remains with us, its urgency and relevance undiminished, waiting for an America open to listen and live up to its idealized aspirations. \u2014 Glenn Whipp<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cGet Out,\u201d \u201c12 Years a Slave,\u201d \u201cFruitvale Station\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" The rise of the yuppies \"Two <\/p>\n

Roddy Piper, left, and Keith David in the 1988 movie \u201cThey Live,\u201d directed by John Carpenter. <\/p>\n

(Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u2018They Live\u2019 (1988)<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in America,\u201d the guy says, but we\u2019re not in the private office of some all-powerful Corleone. Rather, this is a working man in a plaid shirt and denim. As the sun sets on his sad L.A. tent city (inspired by the real-life Justiceville<\/a>), he only wants what everyone else wants: a hard day\u2019s work for fair pay and the chance to get ahead. \u201cIt\u2019ll come,\u201d he says, serenely. He doesn\u2019t know he\u2019s in a John Carpenter movie \u2014 Roddy Piper was never put to better on-screen use \u2014 and that those keeping him down are, in fact, aliens hypnotizing us into an unseeing stupor as they carve up the world\u2019s resources. Released at the tail end of Reaganomics, Carpenter\u2019s most politically forward thriller now feels like a decoder ring for \u201980s-era greed, detachment, complacency and ruthlessness. Carpenter meant us to to see his bug-eyed space invaders as yuppies. He also intended us to question whether we were selling each other out, just to join the \u201chuman power elite\u201d for a tiny piece of pie. \u201cThey Live\u201d looms just on the other side of appreciated. Many genre films say what our more prestigious dramas can\u2019t about the creeping forces that are changing America; this one still feels like it\u2019s getting away with murder. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cAmerican Psycho,\u201d \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers,\u201d \u201cAfter Hours\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" \u201980s women in the workplace \"A <\/p>\n

Harrison Ford, left, Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 movie \u201cWorking Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

(20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n

\u2018Working Girl\u2019 (1988)<\/p>\n

Mike Nichols\u2019 zeitgeisty hit opens on a shot of the Statue of Liberty hoisting her torch like a paycheck. Down by her green toes, Melanie Griffith\u2019s Staten Island secretary Tess McGill ferries to Manhattan to type memos for important men. Tess has a job, not a career. But 1988 was the first year that female undergraduates outnumbered men on college campuses. Even without a degree, Tess is ambitious to climb the corporate ladder \u2014 once she swaps out her practical white sneakers for a pair of pumps. The script by Kevin Wade throws up hurdles of sexism and class snobbery, never sugarcoating how Tess\u2019s male co-workers treat her like a blow-up doll. (Critics dismissed Griffith, too, until this performance earned her an Oscar nomination.) Yet note how her Ivy League-educated boss Katharine (Sigourney Weaver) isn\u2019t immune to harassment either; she\u2019s just mastered how to parry her colleagues\u2019 advances. Fantastic as it is, \u201cWorking Girl\u2019s\u201d core flaw is that Tess can\u2019t snag her seat at the conference table until she yanks Katharine out of it. Weaver said that when she showed the script to real-life working girls on Wall Street, they asked, \u201cThis awful secretary steals your man, wears your clothes, takes your office \u2014 who\u2019s going to sympathize with her?\u201d Millions did and still do. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/p>\n

See also: \u201c9 to 5,\u201d \u201cBaby Boom,\u201d \u201cSilkwood\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Digital alienation \"Two <\/p>\n

Justin Timberlake, left, and Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 movie \u201cThe Social Network,\u201d directed by David Fincher.<\/p>\n

(Merrick Morton \/ Columbia TriStar )<\/p>\n

\u2018The Social Network\u2019 (2010)<\/p>\n

In 2010, Apple introduced the iPad, Instagram launched its app and Silicon Valley still looked to many tech-besotted Americans like a force for progress. At a moment when technology companies were promising to bring people closer together, David Fincher\u2019s acerbic drama about the founding of Facebook had a darker theory about why people wanted to connect in the first place. Aaron Sorkin\u2019s screenplay traces Facebook\u2019s creation back to a very old human desire: getting noticed by the people who matter. Instead of celebrating innovation, the movie unfolds through lawsuits and broken friendships. At Harvard, Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg fixates on the exclusive final clubs that won\u2019t quite accept him. It\u2019s a surprisingly sour approach for a Facebook origin story. Years before social media became a political battleground, Fincher was focused on something more basic \u2014 the fear that everyone else had been invited to a party you couldn\u2019t get into. The movie ends with Zuckerberg alone at a computer, refreshing the Facebook page of the woman who dumped him and waiting for her to accept his friend request. More than 15 years later, it\u2019s still hard to think of a better image for the loneliness and insecurity lurking beneath our connected lives. \u2014 Josh Rottenberg<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cHer,\u201d \u201cEighth Grade,\u201d \u201cIngrid Goes West\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Post-9\/11 anxieties \"A <\/p>\n

A scene from the 2004 movie \u201cTeam America: World Police,\u201d directed by Trey Parker.<\/p>\n

(Melinda Sue Gordon \/ Paramount Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u2018Team America: World Police\u2019 (2004)<\/p>\n

To add drama to the ennui over the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, \u201cSouth Park\u201d creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pledged to immediately produce a silly sitcom about the winner. \u201cThat\u2019s My Bush!\u201d ran for eight episodes in the spring of 2001, with plans to spin off into a feature called \u201cGeorge W. Bush and the Secret of the Glass Tiger.\u201d But the September 11 attacks changed everything, including the work of satirists. Parker and Stone pivoted to \u201cTeam America: World Police,\u201d a bomb-throwing comedy about our country\u2019s napalm-strength combination of na\u00efvet\u00e9 and swagger. To prevent an attack hailed as \u201c9\/11 times a thousand,\u201d a squadron of puppet commandos blows up the planet themselves. The dark joke is these marionettes aren\u2019t behaving much differently than the action heroes who have shaped the national id \u2014 it\u2019s a through-the-looking-glass lens into our Hollywoodized view of the globe, down to the Parisian streets made of cobblestone croissants. At once straight-faced, sacrilegious and scatological, \u201cTeam America\u201d needed nine tries to eke past the MPAA. Yet in divided times, it was a unifier. The political spectrum from Kim Jong Il to Alec Baldwin got equally savaged and the film\u2019s eff-yeah patriotic theme song (\u201cRock and roll! The Internet! Slavery!\u201d) could even be heard blaring from real-life tanks in Fallujah. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/p>\n

See also: \u201cEddington,\u201d \u201cIdiocracy,\u201d \u201cHarold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can you tell the story of America in 10 movies? Maybe so \u2014 at least a version of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[127142,15042,7363,153369,1924,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,136675,16145,153371,7755,153370,34380,153368,8074,72],"class_list":["post-379150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-civil-war","tag-conversation","tag-country","tag-essential-movie","tag-film","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-main-character","tag-moment","tag-oil-man","tag-one","tag-robert-altman","tag-spike-lee","tag-turbulent-america","tag-world","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}