Was recently appalled to discover that my sons had never seen Bull Durham!! Seriously - have you ever tried watching a baseball game without quoting Bull Durham at least once? It may actually be impossible.
This got me thinking about other "cultural touchstone" movies my sons may have missed - not necessarily the movies that show up on API's Top 100 lists, but those movies that are so universal, people quote/reference them without any need for explanation or clarification. The kind of movies that inevitably show up on The Simpsons, or that are employed as insta-metaphors, like "Animal House."
I asked my friends to nominate movies they believe all in this category. Below is the admittedly eclectic list we came up with - what have we missed?
- A Few Good Men
- A League of their Own
- Airplane!
- Alien
- Amadeus
- Animal House
- Apocalypse Now
- Army of Darkness
- Back to the Future
- Big
- Big Lebowski
- Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- Blade Runner
- Blazing Saddles
- Blues Brothers
- Breakfast Club
- Broadcast News
- Bull Durham
- Caddyshack
- Casablanca
- Castaway
- Chinatown
- Christmas Story
- Citizen Kane
- Clerks
- Cool Hand Luke
- Dead Poets Society
- Deer Hunter
- Die Hard movies
- Dirty Dancing
- Dirty Harry
- Dr. Strangelove
- Elf
- E.T.
- Fargo
- Fast Times at Ridgmont High
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Field of Dreams
- Fight Club
- Forest Gump
- Green Berets
- Ghostbusters
- Gladiator
- Godfather movies
- Gone with the Wind
- Good Fellas
- Good Will Hunting
- Goonies
- Groundhog Day
- Harry Potter movies
- Indiana Jones movies
- It’s a Wonderful Life
- Jaws
- Jerry Maguire
- Jurassic Park
- Karate Kid
- Lion King
- Lord of the Rings movies
- Mad Max movies
- Matrix
- Monte Python & the Holy Grail
- Napoleon Dynamite
- National Lampoon’s Vacation
- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
- Office Space
- Planet of the Apes
- Point Break
- Predator
- Pretty in Pink
- Pretty Woman
- Princess Bride
- Psycho
- Pulp Fiction
- Rain Man
- Rear Window
- Rebel Without a Cause
- Risky Business
- Rocky movies
- Saving Private Ryan
- Scarface
- Shawshank Redemption
- Shining
- Silence of the Lambs
- Sixth Sense
- Sleepless in Seattle
- Some Like it Hot
- Sophie’s Choice
- Sound of Music
- Speed
- Star Wars movies
- Sunset Boulevard
- Super Troopers
- Ten Commandments
- Terminator movies
- This is Spinal Tap
- Titanic
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Top Gun
- Toy Story movies
- Usual Suspects
- Wall Street
- War Games
- West Side Story
- When Harry Met Sally
- Wizard of Oz
- Young Frankenstein
