In honor of the 4th of July, I’m choosing some of my favorite American movies, with the caveat that they are DVDs we already own. That said we probably have less than a hundred movies or TV series on DVD or Blu-Ray. The only other criteria was that the directors had to be born in America. I plan on watching many, if not all, this holiday weekend, which begins today for me.

So here’s the list in alphabetical order

• Citizen Kane
• The Conversation
• Close Encounters of the First Kind
• Do The Right Thing
• GoodFellas
• Heat
• The Jerk
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• Office Space
• The Princess Bride

Initially, I also had Sunset Boulevard and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. However, Billy Wilder was born in Poland; James Cameron, Canada.

A few other movies I considered were Before Sunrise, The Electric Horseman, The Matrix, and The Natural. The Richard Linklater movie that has been picked by a lot of critics for the 4th of July as an essential American movie is Slacker, which I’ve never seen. And while I like Robert Redford, especially those two movies, they are not perfect movies. For example, in The Natural is the scene with Barbara Hershey shooting him for some unknown reason, and a side story with Kim Basinger. And The Electric Horseman probably could be edited by about 20 to 30 minutes.

All that said, similarly The Jerk is not a perfect movie, but its funny parts are really, really funny, and aren’t depressing AF.

Other movies by the directors among my top 10 that might have been more perfect for the category, but we don’t own on DVD, are the following:

1. The Godfather Part II
2. Malcolm X
3. The 25th Hour
4. Saving Private Ryan
5. Taxi Driver

I’ll also give a special shout out to Idiocracy, for obvious reasons. But pound for pound, Office Space is the more quotable of the two.

All apologies for no collage with all the movie posters. Fill them in with your mind or ask AI to do it for you. Wherever you are in the world, stay cool, stay safe.