America, America

Call it star-spangled skepticism—there’s a whole host of movies in the collection that celebrate the United States by taking a hard, clear-eyed look at it. Uncompromising documentaries, historical dramas, surreal countercultural head trips: these are films that wrestle with the idea and reality of America, from the Civil War (Ride with the Devil_) to the bicentennial (Dazed and Confused_) to the contemporary political landscape (Tanner ’88).