The 4th of July is a quintessentially American holiday, and like its cousin Thanksgiving, it has inspired far more scenes and sequences set on the holiday than full movies dedicated to its ins and outs. But as with Thanksgiving, this flexibility is actually a blessing. Unlike Christmas, which has so many holiday-set options that it can be difficult to find new ones after you’ve made your way through the Christmas canon, the range of movies that can qualify as 4th of July-related is pretty wide. In other words: No, you don’t just have to watch Independence Day for the 10th time (even if it is turning 30). You don’t even need to watch Born on the Fourth of July just because of the title (though it is quite good). And you certainly don’t need to venture out to the theater to catch Young Washington.
Instead, you can find 4th of July-appropriate choices on any number of streamers, including Netflix — even if they’re not currently streaming Jaws, perhaps the greatest summer-holiday movie ever made. These choices largely aren’t oriented around the specific date of July 4th, or themes of American history (though there is plenty of the latter baked in). They’re just excellent movies about American culture and what it means to be an American, from a variety of points of view. Here they are, ordered chronologically by their original release year.
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Everett Collection Get a jump on the end of summer with this early George Lucas masterwork, which also unsurprisingly makes our list of the best summer movies overall. Though it’s set closer to Labor Day than Independence Day, Lucas’s chronicle of one night in the life of a gaggle of early-’60s teenagers captures the feeling of tooling around the main drag (and the side streets) after dark on a warm summer evening, something plenty of people closely associate with the 4th of July.
Stream American Graffiti on Netflix
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Photo: Everett Collection The entire Rocky-and-Creed series is currently streaming on Netflix, and likely plenty of folks would go straight to Rocky IV as their patriotic Stallone vehicle of choice, given that it pits Rocky Balboa against a fearsome, murderous boxer from the USSR. But this 4th of July, why not get closer to America at its best, rather than at its most self-caricatured and self-indulgent? For that, return to the original underdog story Rocky, as much a character study and love story as a boxing picture, and the perfect Stallone vehicle — one that’s perfectly bookended by his supporting role in Creed, nearly 40 years later. That movie focuses on a different sort of underdog, a long-unknown and underestimated son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s opponent in the first film (and second, and friend in subsequent installments). Michael B. Jordan is electric in the role, and Stallone does career-best work bringing back Rocky. Together, they make a terrific All-American double feature, both centered around Philadelphia, home of the Liberty Bell.
Stream Rocky on Netflix
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Everett Collection A decade apart, Joel and Ethan Coen released two of their most American comedies, one a shaggy-dog private-eye story with an affable stoner (Jeff Bridges) stumbling through a Gulf War-era mystery in the early ’90s, and the other an interlocking series of bumbling mishaps, often at the hands of U.S. government agents. The Big Lebowski, despite its near-record profanity levels and intentionally abrasive John Goodman character (Walter, a loudmouth and intractable Vietnam vet), is the cuddlier of the two; Burn After Reading, the more caustic and curdled (and, with Brad Pitt and George Clooney on hand, both playing dopes, the more star-studded). You can choose the Coens farce that most fits your mood this July 4th, or you can double feature them for a fuller picture of the best, worst, and most ridiculous this country has to offer.
Stream The Big Lebowski on Netflix
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Photo: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX What would an All-American holiday be without Spike Lee? Maybe our greatest chronicler of contemporary social history, Lee made a particularly epic ode to all manner of American identities with his 2020 opus Da 5 Bloods, following a group of Black soldiers returning to Vietnam to pay tribute to their fallen comrade — and possibly retrieve some buried gold. Sprawling, thrilling, discursive, and anchored by a dynamite, should-have-been-Oscar-nominated performance from Delroy Lindo (sporting a MAGA hat, no less!), Lee’s ambitious film attempts to capture the Black experience in the Vietnam War, and in the years since. It’s his version of those Oliver Stone movies about Vietnam, brought even further up to date with our fractured present.
Stream Da 5 Bloods on netflix
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Photo: Netflix Richard Linklater enlists rotoscoped animation and the voiceover talents of Jack Black to illustrate and narrate, respectively, this nostalgic look back at the lead-up to the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, as seen from the imagination of a 10-year-old boy living in the Texas suburbs. It’s not a plot-heavy affair, but it’s an enormously charming portrait of the American suburbs at a time of great social and technological change. It’s also a great kid-friendly introduction to Linklater alongside his more famous Black collaboration, School of Rock.
Stream Apollo 10 1/2 on netflix
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Photo: Universal Jordan Peele’s horror/sci-fi movie doesn’t offer a metaphor as straightforward (or damning) as his instant classic Get Out. But by weaving its story into film history — its two leads run a business providing animals to film productions, stretching back to the earliest days of American cinema — Nope becomes, in part, a meta-narrative about the spectacle of the American summer blockbuster, among other things. (It helps that it involves an alien encounter, placing it alongside summer-movie classics like Independence Day, Signs, and War of the Worlds, albeit on a more intimate yet still IMAX-friendly scale.) The film’s mix of wry humor, family drama, sci-fi mystery, and white-knuckle suspense confirms that Peele is one of our current, and particularly American, genre masters.
Stream Nope on Netflix
The best thing about all of these movies is that while they make for strong 4th of July viewing, they’re not so seasonal that they won’t play just as well the next day!
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
