As we celebrate America’s 241st birthday, this special 24 Frames gallery highlights Fresh and Certified Fresh patriotic movies for our long weekend of good food, family, and fireworks!
Han Solo as POTUS, an English actor playing a Soviet nationalist, directed by a German filmmaker. Truly, we are the melting pot of the world (and galaxy).
Team America: World Police
Year: 2004
Tomatometer: 77%
The world has gone to handbasket heck since Team America left the scene. Had Earth remained under their puppetral watch, the following, at a minimum, would happen: Britain stays in the European Union, the Crimea region returns to the Atlanteans (from whence it came), and no one makes a Jen & the Holograms movie.
Independence Day
Year: 1996
Tomatometer: 61%
Bill Pullman’s presidential “annihilation” speech is so rousing that not only did it beat back the alien tide, but it has entered the pantheon of everyday use. Try the speech out at baby showers, crowded elevators, court arraignments…the possibilities are endless.
Live Free or Die Hard
Year: 2007
Tomatometer: 82%
Taking the Union’s most badass state motto and running with it, the movie is set not in New Hampshire but Washington D.C., where bad luck John has to foil cyber-terrorism with his fists on July 4th.
The Sandlot
Year: 1993
Tomatometer: 59% (CLOSE ENOUGH)
A greatest hits of boomer quintessence: baseball, PF Flyers, and unsupervised children. There are no explosions in this movie, unless you count kissing Wendy Peffercorn.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Year: 2011
Tomatometer: 80%
The Greatest Generation’s poster boy in Marvel’s gleefully earnest piece of comic agitprop.
Inglourious Basterds
Year: 2009
Tomatometer: 89%
We won World War II but we didn’t win enough according to Quentin Tarntino. After all, what kind of finale to Earth’s hugest conflict doesn’t include bad Italian accents and blowing out Hitler’s kneecaps in a maelstrom of bullets and dynamite?
Rocky
Year: 1976
Tomatometer: 93%
The ultimate underdog story that touches upon our shared values: opportunity, sentimentality, commitment, and love.
Miracle
Year: 2004
Tomatometer: 80%
A dramatization of the Miracle on Ice, when the 1980 American Olympic hockey team defeated the heavily-favored Soviet team.
Apollo 13
Year: 1995
Tomatometer: 95%
Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning drama recounts the true story of three astronauts and a NASA ground team whose combined courage and ingenuity helped avert a potentially tragic loss.
Forrest Gump
Year: 1994
Tomatometer: 73%
Tom Hanks stars in this contemporary American folk tale that revisits some of the most significant moments in our nation’s history through the eyes of a simple, well-meaning everyman.
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Year: 1939
Tomatometer: 94%
A celebration of the everyman starring the ultimate everyman, James Stewart, as he journeys to the nation’s capitol to filibuster against political corruption.
Flags of our Fathers
Year: 2006
Tomatometer: 73%
Based on James Bradley’s nonfiction book, Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the five US Soldiers who raised the American Flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima is a tribute to the unwavering determination of our armed forces.
Patton
Year: 1970
Tomatometer: 95%
George C. Scott won an Oscar as the Operation Overlord Army leader, and whose opening monologue in front of the American flag remains seared in our pop cultural consciousness.
Zero Dark Thirty
Year: 2013
Tomatometer: 92%
Equal parts brawn and brains, Kathryn Bigelow’s potent thriller demonstrates the resourcefulness of our intelligence agencies and the die-hard spirit of our most elite soldiers in hunting down global threats at all costs.
Lone Survivor
Year: 2014
Tomatometer: 75%
A Marine operation in Afghanistan goes awry and Mark Wahlberg has to claw his way back in this testament of American tenacity under pressure.
Black Hawk Down
Year: 2001
Tomatometer: 76%
Another harrowing true-life military tale that doubles as valorous glorification for armed combat.
Saving Private Ryan
Year: 1998
Tomatometer: 92%
A brutal war picture of courage and sacrifice that pulls no punches. AND it opens and ends on a shot of a waving American flag.
Glory
Year: 1989
Tomatometer: 93%
During a time when our nation was divided, Colonel Robert Shaw and his regiment of brave African-American soldiers proved that heroism resides in us all, regardless of the color of our skin.
Gettysburg
Year: 1993
Tomatometer: 80%
The largest battle of the Civil War gets the epic treatment it deserves, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
1776
Year: 1972
Tomatometer: 64%
A musical retelling of the first Continental Congress, where the founding fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Year: 1942
Tomatometer: 91%
A grand hoofer of a musical, starring James Cagney as he dances and sings through a number of patriotic tunes. The movie’s immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack raised American morale and inadvertently contributed to the war effort.
U-571
Year: 2000
Tomatometer: 68%
The totally factual, historically accurate movie about how America (and America alone) sent a submarine to crack the German Enigma machine during WWII.
Argo
Year: 2012
Tomatometer: 96%
Playing loose with history, Ben Affleck cast himself as an exfiltration genius responsible for rescuing six Americans during the 1980 Iran hostage crisis by faking a movie production within the country.
