The Best Fourth of July Movies to Watch This Weekend

The usual pitfalls of assembling holiday movie lists are doubled and deepened when choosing the best Fourth of July movies. You’ve got your movies where there’s a scene or sequence set on Independence Day, but aren’t about or set exclusively on that date; you’ve got your movies everyone identifies with the holiday despite not actually addressing it directly (basically any movie about an American institution or well-liked president); you’ve got Americana mood movies that, again, don’t have much to do with July 4th; and, on top of that, you’ve got Hollywood blockbusters that are synonymous with the spectacle of fireworks and explosions, especially movies that heavily feature fireworks and/or explosions themselves.