Fantasy Film Festival: Purple Mountains’ Majesty/Amber Waves of Grain
What are you doing for the Fourth of July? Are you spending your glorious Wednesday off in the backyard with scads of family and friends, flipping burgers and playing innocent water-balloon games that inevitably get horribly out of hand? Are you heading down to an open field or a body of water for a fireworks show? Or is it just too hot out there, and you’re sheltering in air-conditioned place until the nuclear summer passes? (CH staff will be attending a friend’s Revolutionary War reenactment, complete with marshmallow muskets, but that’s immaterial.)
If you’re one of those screw-the-heat-let’s-close-the-curtains people, have we got a plan for you! How about this: a day of patriotic movies. Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, the Kevin Costner movies? We thought so! And so:
1776 (1972): Everybody’s favorite founding-fathers musical. Fine edu-tainment, I tell you, with a Richard Henry Lee song and everything.
The Patriot (2000): It’s a hard life fighting for your (almost-)country and having Heath Ledger as your hot son.
Born on the Fourth of July (1989): It has the Fourth of July in the title. How could we leave it out?
Jefferson in Paris (1995): Yes, everyone’s favorite constitution-framer had some issues, and yes, it takes place in France. And yes, it has Nick Nolte. Still: relevant.
Dave (1993): Anyone can be President! But it helps if you look like the guy who’s already got the job.
Watch out for those fireworks, kids! Have a happy Fourth.
Fourth of July, Independence Day, patriotic movies, patriotism, America
February 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] U.S. primary elections aren’t a movie—not in the literal sense, anyway—but it seems to the CH staff that maybe they should be. [...]