- Fifty Years After the Bicentennial, A Declaration of Independence for American Filmmakers (July 3, 2026)
July 4th marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. Speaking as someone old enough to have personally experienced the 200th anniversary way back in 1976—talking to my children about history, I used to add “When cave-kids rode dinosaurs to school”—I’m bummed out that it’s not a bigger deal.
But I understand. Whoo, boy, do I understand. The people are exhausted and bummed out when they aren’t seething with resentment at how far we’ve fallen in the world’s esteem and in our own estimation.
We’ve spent the past ten years having to look at and listen to one of the worst humans ever to occupy the Oval Office—a man who carried on like he was still president even when he was out of office, and who, in his second term (nonconsecutive, which somehow makes it worse) has seemed even more racist and sexist, more casually belligerent, and less interested in the details of governance than he did the first time around.
He seems to become genuinely engaged only when being flattered and bribed by American tech patrons or foreign nationals; pointing out the latest faux-gold ornamentation added to the White House; or presenting concept drawings for one of his numerous, self-aggrandizing architectural projects, such as the bunker-slash-ballroom he wants built for the low, low price of $600 million, or a triumphal arch that looked better in the original German.
No wonder his public approval ratings are lower than any president’s since public approval started being measured, and his “National State Fair” couldn’t even book has-beens to perform and draws fewer daily visitors than a child’s lemonade stand.
The thing is, we were in a similar place fifty years ago, though nowhere near as dire. The progressive utopia that seemed to be brewing in the 1960s was wiped away by the 1968 election of Republican president Richard Nixon, who promised to “restore law and order”—a dog-whistle euphemism for crushing dissent, especially by leftists and people of color—but who ended up resigning in disgrace six years later for ordering a politically motivated burglary and covering it up. The most notorious abuse of the Chief Executive’s pardoning power up until that point happened after his successor, former Vice President Gerald Ford, was sworn in and used his constitutional authority to inoculate Nixon against being prosecuted for any of his crimes. (Now I hear Homer Simpson telling Bart, as in “The Simpsons Movie,” “The most notorious abuse of the Chief Executive’s pardoning power so far.”)
Robert Altman’s “Nashville.”
The many great movies of that era were among the factors that kept Americans from feeling as if the country had completely given up on trying to live up to its professed ideals. In the run-up to the Bicentennial, there were numerous classics that analyzed America through history and metaphor: “Bound for Glory,” “Nashville,” “Taxi Driver,” “Killer of Sheep,” “Rocky,” “Chinatown,” two “Godfather” movies, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Cooley High,” “Car Wash,” “Shampoo,” “The French Connection,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” and too many others to list here.
What’s most striking about such films is that a lot of them were made outside the established channels. Some were made within the Hollywood system, which by the seventies had been in decline for three decades and was a shadow of its former self. An outsized portion came from one studio, Paramount, which was then run by Robert Evans, a former actor and sleazy hustler who nevertheless loved movies and respected film history; among other classics, he greenlit the “Godfather” movies and “Chinatown.”
But many more were developed and/or funded independently of the studios and then picked up for distribution. One independent company, BBS Productions, put out some of the sharpest, most uncompromising films of the late ’60s and early ’70s, including “Easy Rider,” “Harold and Maude,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Five Easy Pieces,” and “The King of Marvin Gardens.”
The great Robert Altman often developed his films in isolation and hoped they got picked up and distributed by a bigger fish: “Nashville,” arguably his masterpiece, was originally a United Artists movie, but when UA pulled out, Altman somehow cobbled together funding from Paramount and ABC. His 1970s comedy “Brewster McCloud” was originally financed by MGM, but Altman needed additional money to finish it and got it from one man, record producer Lou Adler. “Killer of Sheep” was a senior thesis film by Charles Burnett, made for spare change to fulfill a master’s degree requirement at UCLA Film School.
Charles Burnett’s ‘Killer of Sheep.”
The point is, the entertainment industry is arguably even more shallow, purely acquisitive, and disinterested in anything but profit now than it was back then, which is really saying something, but somehow, meaningful, relevant popular art still got made.
The same miracle is possible today.
Sure, it might be more difficult to get work that’s genuinely challenging or critical of the status quo through the mainstream production pipelines, thanks to the tremendous amount of media consolidation that’s happened in the past ten years (Disney buying 20th Century Fox, tech mogul Larry Ellison almost certainly ending up owning both Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, and so on).
To be fair, something like the pre-Bicentennial cinema flowering only occurred because by the ’70s, the previously dominant system was in disarray, and studio bosses realized the old-style stuff wasn’t drawing young audiences or making older ones excited enough to leave their TV sets and buy a movie ticket.
But here, too, you can see parallels between then and now. Every few months since the economic devastation of 2020, a “Cinema, Dead or Alive?” type article has appeared in some major media outlet. But lately, to my relief, the pendulum has definitely swung towards “alive.”
According to recent news, this year North American box office receipts may finally match those from 2019, before the pandemic disrupted production of new movies and economically destroyed moviegoing, along with almost every other industry dependent on people leaving their homes and becoming part of a crowd. The most devoted theatrical moviegoing audience is Gen Z, and repertory and arthouse business is booming in some cities.
Both are unexpected developments that some observers have attributed to the growing popularity of Letterboxd, which “gamified” movie watching by making users feel as though they were competing in a global race to see as many films as possible. Related: the rise of so-called microcinemas—independently booked theaters with as few as twenty to fifty seats, where overhead is small enough that there’s freedom to book micro-budgeted, undistributed, and otherwise non-mainstream movies.
NEON’s “Obsession,” one recent (and potent) example of the YouTuber-to-filmmaker pipeline.
On top of all that, the most widely used platform for viewing new content, bigger than broadcast, cable and streaming audience numbers combined, is YouTube: every year, 2.8 billion people worldwide watch “content” on it, and while that might sound dispiriting at first, mainly because so many hugely successful videos are along the lines of “Watch This Jerk Get Owned in Waffle House Brawl,” it’s about twice the size of the entirety of global cinema put together.
And, as pretty much any modern filmmaker (who will likely hate being called a “content provider”) will tell you, the metric of success for non-mainstream, micro-budget or otherwise anti-commercial moviemaking is quite different from that of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm or DC. If a direct-to-YouTube (or Vimeo) movie gets more than 500,000 hits, it’s enough to make a well-off person who feels like putting a little bit of money into a movie take the filmmakers’ next project seriously.
It’s sort of a corollary of what happens in different areas of book publishing. If the new Stephen King novel sells only a million copies, it’s considered a disappointment. But if an independently published horror novel by a first-time author sells more than 50,000 copies, it’s considered enough of a success to be a viable candidate for film, TV, or streaming adaptation. (Many post-millennium hits, including “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Beautiful Disaster,” “The Celestine Prophecy,” and “The Martian,” originated as self-published books.)
So yeah, things are tough out there, and the state of the world seems awfully bleak from certain angles. But just as there’s cause for cautious optimism ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and beyond, the future of cinema, whatever forms it ultimately takes, is the brightest it has been since the 1970s, when the old ways were falling apart and new ways were being born.
And so: independent filmmakers, if you’re reading this, go out and make your mark. It’s your time. As the THX Sound tagline used to put it, the audience is listening.
- 2026 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Preview: 10 Films We Can’t Wait to See (July 3, 2026)
It’s the 60th edition of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, a cinematic event, running from July 3-11, that combines world premieres from across Eastern Europe, with festival highlights from Sundance, Berlinale, and Cannes, along with rare restorations and the major luminaries of cinema. This year promises to be an exceptional anniversary for one of the world’s oldest festivals, whose picturesque mountainous surroundings act as a visual cue for the steadiness of this institution.
This year, I will cover the festival once more (Thanks to Isaac Feldberg for covering for me last year), and I can’t wait to dive into all that KVIFF has to offer. Come back starting Monday morning, July 6, for my coverage, which will include many of the 10 films below.
“Dao”
One of the major films from Berlinale 2026, Senegalese director Alain Gomis’ “Dao” takes its latest bow at KVIFF. The three-hour family epic oscillates between ceremonial family gatherings happening in France and Guinea-Bissau to two women in two different variations of the same culture. Gomis’ intermingling of European and African values leaps over into his kinetic filmmaking sensibilities, wherein “Dao” mixes narrative film elements with documentary aesthetics for a picture that takes pleasure in exploring the destabilization of tradition and identity.
“Black Money for White Nights”
Following “Triumph,” which starred Maria Bakalova as a psychic used by the Bulgarian army to search for an alien artifact, the directing duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov are back. Their latest is an equally bleak tragicomedy about an elderly couple whose hopes of visiting Russia to experience the White Nights, a moment of perpetual twilight, are dashed when the country invades Ukraine—rendering their trip null and void. The harsh turn of events, allow for harsher secrets to be revealed, upending what appeared to be a happy, stable marriage via two frank lead performances.
“Hijamat”
Nader Saeivar, a longtime creative collaborator of Jafar Panahi—the pair co-wrote “It Was Just an Accident” and “3 Faces”—arrives in the Crystal Globe competition with his fourth directorial work: “Hijamat.” Edited by Panahi, the film, seen through the eyes of its conflicted protagonist Murat (Kida Khodr Ramadan), considers the limits of queerness within a traditionalist Islamic culture. A ruminative work filled with silences that are both revealing and looming and built on the measured expressions of its lead actor, Ramadan, the film positions itself as a cinematic fight for internal peace.
“The Match”
With the World Cup ongoing, Karlovy Vary is remaining on brand by screening Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco’s “The Match” as their opening night film. Cabral and Franco’s direct documentary employs the 1986 edition to the sporting event—when Maradona had his legendary ‘Hand of God’ goal—to dive into the impact the Falklands War had on Argentina. The sport, therefore, becomes a battleground where old geopolitical wounds can be healed and an unleveled playing field is rebalanced to heart pounding results.
“The Only Living Pickpocket in New York”
Some premises immediately catch your eye: In Noah Segan’s “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,” John Turturro stars as a thief incarcerated since the 1980s, who upon release into a modern world, discovers his livelihood wholly altered. Re-teaming Turturro with past collaborators, like Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito, the reflective picture is a minor key interrogation of the passage of time.
“There’s a certain bleak finality to [the film] that serves Turturro’s acting style well. He… almost seems to relish being opposite former acting partners like Buscemi and Esposito, with whom he starred in one of the most essential New York films of all time: ‘Do the Right Thing.’ Looking at them again, almost four decades later, feels like a vision of a changing city, adding another grace note to a film that’s full of them,” wrote Brian Tallerico out of the film’s Sundance premiere. It’s KVIFF’s closing night film.
“Paris Paris”
Premiering in the Proxima competition, Isabelle Tollenaere’s allegorical immigrant drama follows three men: Yi-En from China, Junior from Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine—as they traverse the cultural, economic, and language barriers they encounter in Paris. Consequently, the trio share a dilapidated apartment in a building set to be demolished, a metaphor of displacement that mirrors their journeys into a new country. Tollenaere’s ruminative conception of these characters and her dashes of magical realism further open a narrative that deeply considers the impermanence of creating a home when the one you’ve been forced from looms large in your psyche and in your heart.
“Robert Richardson: The White Devil”
One of cinema’s great cinematographers has the camera turned on him. It all began when Jana Hojdova, a graduate of FAMU, reached out to Robert Richardson—the three-time Academy Award winner known for lensing “Platoon,” “JFK,” “The Aviator,” and more—to interview him for her master’s graduate project. To her surprise, he agreed. To her even greater shock, her interview request turned into an entire film. Hojdova diligently captures Richardson as he goes through his priceless archives of photos and storyboards and reveals parts of his life that had previously been unknown.
“Rose”
It feels like no one is riding a higher high than Sandra Hüller. While the German actress has always been well respected, garnering praise for “Toni Erdmann,” the double-hit of “The Zone of Interest” and her Oscar-nominated turn in “Anatomy of a Fall,” sent her into the stratosphere. In this year alone, she has starred in the box office smash “Project Hail Mary” and premiered Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” at Cannes, and has Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Digger” still waiting in the wings. “Rose,” which premiered at Berlinale 2026, netting her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, is a 17th-century set period piece that sees Hüller disguising herself as a male soldier and heir to an estate. It’s a shapeshifting role for an actress who appears capable of playing anybody.
“The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s”
Northern Irish documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins is one of those hyper-active creators whose persistently evolving filmography causes you to wonder if they sleep. A couple of years ago his ode to British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,” took home the festival’s top Crystal Globe prize. This year, he’s back with a segment from his survey of the history of documentary film. While a previous part covering the 1970s premiered at Cannes 2026, KVIFF will host the section recalling the 1980s. His latest filmic essay figures to feature the hallmarks of his expressive style—from his poetic prose narration to his keen curiosity—and a wealth of new insights.
“Tainted Horseplay”
One of Věra Chytilová’s lesser-seen films, “Tainted Horseplay” (“A Hoof Here, A Hoof There”), is an oddball tragicomedy set in Karlovy Vary. It follows three friends who balance their lives by trading off mundane days for exciting sexually liberated nights. Their explicit fun is interrupted with the advent of AIDs. The touchy subject doesn’t deter Chytilová’s sense of frivolity and her love of poking at the male ego. Nor did it stop the Czech Republic (at the time Czechoslovakia) from submitting it for the 62nd Academy Awards. A digital restored version of the film is set to screen at KVIFF.
- 10 of Roger Ebert’s Favorite Movies About America (July 3, 2026)
Roger Ebert loved movies for the stories they tell about people and also for the world they reflect and sometimes shape. In his later years, he wrote the Great Movies books to inspire audiences to look beyond current releases to better understand what led us to where we are in the world of movies and in our culture, politics, and history. And then, in his last years, his column “Roger Ebert’s Journal” included his views on politics and the essential American values, along with very personal stories.
The movies that mattered most to Roger showed us the lives of people outside our experience and illuminated a new perspective on our own. Movies love stories about outsiders, underdogs, and rebels, all central to the American character. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the document that led to the founding of the United States of America with a new, if flawed declaration of the inalienable rights of all individuals, here are some of the movies he loved most for what they showed us about our country, the best and worst, the failures and the resilience, and beauty of our aspirations and the mistakes we make in trying to achieve them.
“Citizen Kane“
Roger’s audio commentary on what many consider the greatest American film of all time is one of the most erudite, fascinating discussions of filmmaking ever recorded. Kane is a boy taken from his family to be given all the advantages of wealth, who becomes a man, careless yet optimistic and public-spirited, but then bitter and selfish. And it is a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling, visual, dramatic narrative, acting, cinematography, and performance, with its 25-year-old writer-director in the title role.
In his “Great Movies” essay about “Citizen Kane,” Roger wrote about the “bravura visual moments,” the insightful depiction of history and progress, the circular storytelling that adds more context and nuance with every return to an incident, the impulse to try to understand, and the ultimate unsolvable mystery of any human being.
“The Best Years of Our Lives“
Roger praised this film about the difficulties faced by ordinary American men in returning home after WWII for not trying to paint them as extraordinary. They are good, decent men, but they are not especially heroic, and their struggles to adjust to “normal” life and to process how their experiences have changed them remain relatable even eight decades later.
Twenty years ago, Roger wrote: “Seen more than six decades later, it feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided. After the war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.”
“The Godfather“
Roger noticed something unusual about this Best Picture Oscar winner that explains our fascination with, and even sympathy for, its characters. We may see a lot of brutal, graphic violence, but all of it takes place within the limited world of the crime syndicates. He called it “a brilliant conjuring act, inviting us to consider the Mafia entirely on its own terms.” The audience hears about threats outside of that world, notably a story about a gun held to a man’s brow, and we see the severed head of a man’s beloved horse. But we do not see any violence against people who are not part of the syndicate.
Roger said that, within his own world, Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone has a sense of morality in how he grants favors and insists on staying out of the drug business. And yet, the story is about the corruption of his son, Michael, who at first insists he is not part of the criminal world but, in this movie and its sequel, becomes increasingly ruthless.
“Nashville“
Roger called Robert Altman’s film about country music performers a musical that is also a political parable and “a tender poem to the wounded and the sad.” He wrote: “The buried message may be that life doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion to the neat ending of a story. It’s messy and we bump up against others, and we’re all in this together. That’s the message I get at the end of “Nashville,” and it has never failed to move me.”
“All the President’s Men“
The “third-rate burglary” break-in to the Democratic office at the Watergate building turned out to be the thread that unraveled crimes at the highest levels of the United States government. The people who pulled on that thread were two young reporters at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Roger, a journalist himself who loved his profession and adhered to its highest principles of integrity, appreciated the authenticity in this depiction of reporters who challenged the most powerful people in the country. “Who’d have thought you could build tension with scenes where Bernstein walks over to Woodward’s desk and listens in on the extension phone? But you can. And the movie’s so well paced, acted, and edited that it develops the illusion of momentum even in the scenes where Woodward and Bernstein are getting doors slammed in their faces.”
“Killer of Sheep“
I deeply appreciate how Roger was always willing to reconsider a film’s value. When this movie was first released, Roger wrote, “Instead of making a larger statement about his characters, [director Charles Burnett] chooses to show them engaged in a series of daily routines, in the striving and succeeding and failing that make up a life in which, because of poverty, there is little freedom of choice.”
Thirty years later, Roger admitted he had made a mistake in his view of the story about a Black man who works in a slaughterhouse and his family. The daily routines and the absence of freedom are the larger statement. “In this poetic film about a family in Watts, [Burnett] observes the quiet nobility of lives lived with values but without opportunities. The lives go nowhere, the movie goes nowhere, and in staying where they are, they evoke a sense of sadness and loss.”
“The Right Stuff“
Philip Kaufman’s film is based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the US space program, from the breaking of the sound barrier to the selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts.
Writing about it in 2002, Roger wrote that its lukewarm reception at the box office was because “audiences were not ready for a movie that approached the program with skepticism, comedy and irony.“ The larger story of the film goes beyond the achievements and colorful characters of the space program to a meditation on a classic American story, the uneasy transition from the character and skills of the lone cowboy to the more “civilized” established community, as we also see in “My Darling Clementine,” “Lonely Are the Brave,” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“Hoop Dreams“
There’s no better example of Roger’s perspective—and his influence—than his four-star review of this documentary about two Black boys from poor families who are given basketball scholarships to an expensive private school. “A film like “Hoop Dreams” is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and make us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself … [It is] poetry and prose, muckraking and expose, journalism and polemic. It is one of the great moviegoing experiences of my lifetime.”
“Do the Right Thing“
Roger said his first viewing of Spike Lee’s searing story of hot weather and hot tempers in Brooklyn penetrated his soul. It exemplifies Roger’s view that movies are “an empathy machine.” He wrote: Spike Lee “made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants. He didn’t draw lines or take sides but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.”
He noted with appreciation the extraordinary stylistic achievement of the then-32-year-old writer/director and marveled at his empathy for all of the characters. “If you can’t try to understand how the other person feels, you’re a captive inside the box of yourself.”
“Chop Shop“
The immigrant experience is an essential part of the American Story. Roger loved this film from writer/director Ramin Bahrani, the American-born son of Iranian immigrants. The adult performers in the film work in the Iron Triangle area where the film was shot. They often used their own words and were often unaware that the camera was rolling.
Roger said, “What is remarkable is the way, after careful preparation and multiple takes, Bahrani finds performances in them that are so natural and convincing, they put professional actors to shame.” The story is about Ale, a 12-year-old orphan trying to care for himself and his sister by working several jobs, including getting $5 for each car he flags down for an auto repair shop. Roger said, “Ale is in the tradition of American symbols of upward striving.”
- Through the Window: 10 Times That Foreign Directors Have Looked at America (July 3, 2026)
As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday in the middle of a truly divided time for the country, there will be a temptation to watch directly patriotic films as fireworks splash across the sky. The pulse of films like “Independence Day” and even “Saving Private Ryan” will undeniably quicken this weekend, but these celebrations of the country’s perceived strengths feel a little different in an age when so many would argue that “Idiocracy” is the American movie of the moment.
An alternative approach to considering the United States at 250 is to examine how outsiders have captured this country through their filmmaking. Whether it’s exaggerating certain aspects of the American experience or simply embracing our broad canvas, directors born outside the United States have been captivated by it in ways that often provide a unique P.O.V. Several acknowledged masters have even done it more than once. This is not a comprehensive list, but an array of 10 memorable times that foreign directors looked at America, and sometimes even liked what they saw.
Note: I considered several great films directly about the immigrant experience like “In America” and “Brooklyn,” but those are so obviously informed by the director’s background in the plotting that they seemed too easy. It’s kind of a different subgenre.
“Paris, Texas”
One of the most acclaimed “foreign films about America” ever made, Wim Wenders’ 1984 masterpiece stars Harry Dean Stanton (who turns 100 this month!) as Travis Henderson, a man who travels across the country with his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) to find the mother (Nastassja Kinski) of his son. A German/French/U.K. production written by the distinctly American Sam Shepard and directed by the very German Wim Wenders: “Paris, Texas” was always going to be a bit unusual just through that collaboration. But that discordant connection is further amplified by the way the great cinematographer Robby Müller captures the American Southwest in all its unusual splendor. It’s a place that can be both majestic and terrifying in its scope, somewhere a man like Travis Henderson can get both lost and saved.
The story goes that Wenders had been scouting in the Western United States for another film and took photos of the region, including the city of Paris, which the film only mentions but never visits. When he went to work with Shepard on a potential collaboration on the director’s 1982 film “Hammett,” they developed the story together. Elements of John Ford’s work found their way into Shepard and Wenders’ approach, which owes a great deal to the Western, but it’s the visuals that give this film such a unique aesthetic. An imposing sense of desert ambiance through the sound design and a great score by Ry Cooder amplify the haunting Americana of it all, too.
“American Honey”
A very different kind of American road movie unfolds in English filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s 2016 coming-of-age epic, a masterful study of American freedom in all its wonder and pain. Sasha Lane plays a runaway named Star, who hooks up with a group of similar kids who cross the American heartlands, selling magazine subscriptions door to door. The thin narrative skeleton is just something on which Arnold can hang her energetic filmmaking, buoyed by a music-heavy soundtrack that accompanies this study of exuberant youth. Arnold’s film isn’t naïve, but it does tap into something about what it means to be young in the age of the side hustle that American directors often miss.
Shot across Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Iowa, much of “American Honey” was improvised by its cast, with many of the on-screen interactions between Lane and the rest of the young cast drawn from their own realities. The result is a film that feels both like an exaggerated vision of the freedom of American youth and an intimate, realistic one: the endless potential of the American heartland’s expanse contrasted with the human stories unfolding in small towns and at rest stops along the freeways that intersect it.
“RoboCop”
Foreign directors have been giving movie fans visions of the future in which the country could be called unspecified, but not Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop,” which is a direct deconstruction of American Capitalism and macho U.S. masculinity as much as it is a kick-ass action movie. Dismissed by some at the time as just another part of the fabric of the American action blockbuster experience dominated in that era by Sly and Arnie, “RoboCop” is much more than just a shoot-em-up, a film that has developed a deserved reputation as one of the smartest sci-fi/action flicks ever made. It’s one of the most prescient films of the ‘80s, a movie that foresaw how technology would dehumanize people, valuing perceptions of justice and profit over humanity.
Peter Weller plays Alex Murphy, a Detroit cop who is murdered by a gang, resurrected by Omni Consumer Products in the form of RoboCop, a killing machine who doesn’t have to worry about little things like the Constitution or due process. Extremely violent, especially for its time, it’s very clearly a commentary on Reagan-era America, but Verhoeven’s background gives it a different edge than it would have had with a U.S. filmmaker. In a sense, it’s a case of a foreign director dropping right into the era of Reaganomics and patriotic American action films, exploding both with a muzzle flash.
“The Ice Storm”
Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and Joan Allen, “The Ice Storm” is a story of infidelity and tragedy, but it’s the subtle manner in which director Ang Lee approaches the material that keeps it from its potentially melodramatic trappings. He made a film in which secrets corrode from the inside more than explode, one that doesn’t get as surreal as many of the Outsider America films on this list but feels like it would have had a distinctly different tone if made by someone born and raised in the Connecticut region in which it was set. Sometimes we need an outsider to really see what’s on the inside.
One of the best films of a very good year in 1997 (it was Gene Siskel’s #1), Ang Lee’s adaptation of Rick Moody’s 1994 novel has always felt like its artistic success owed a great deal to its filmmaker’s Taiwanese upbringing. The Oscar-winning director of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi” had made several films before this one about repressed emotion and fractured domesticity, and it took the approach he honed on films like “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “The Wedding Banquet” (and even “Sense and Sensibility”) to make Moody’s intimate novel into something cinematic in a way that a traditional American filmmaker couldn’t have.
“Dogville”
Cinema’s enfant terrible, Lars von Trier, certainly wasn’t about to make a movie that simply spelled out his feelings about the United States, although it’s impossible to read “Dogville” as anything but a vicious castigation of the world power, even before it ends with a needle drop of David Bowie’s “Young Americans”. To be fair, some viewers might have been caught up in the filmmaking conceit of “Dogville” too much to really unpack what it was saying: The whole thing takes place on an obvious soundstage, amplifying its theatricality in a Brechtian manner that aligns with Von Trier’s Dogme experimentation.
Part of an intended trilogy known as “USA: Land of Opportunities” with 2005’s “Manderlay” and a third film, “Washington,” that never got made, “Dogville” stars Nicole Kidman as Grace, who finds her way to the titular location after being chased there by mobsters. She’s put to work, used, and abused; her need for protection turned into an asset for the townspeople to exploit. It’s such a violent, vicious movie that ends so darkly that some critics saw it as downright anti-American, but that’s too dismissive of a dramatically daring work. It’s a study in how this country uses poverty and need when it can see a way to commodify them for labor or control. Since its release, its reputation has only grown, with most now citing it as one of Von Trier’s best films.
“Zabriskie Point”
Speaking of films about America from foreign directors whose reputations have shifted, that has undeniably happened with Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 drama, a movie that was downright loathed upon its release but has earned a critical reappraisal across subsequent generations. How much have people come around on “Zabriskie Point”? In the same decade it was released, it was featured in a book titled The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.
Over a half-century after its release, people have come around to Antonioni’s vision, one that takes a look at the counterculture movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s through a European lens. Writer Sam Shepard was involved in the screenplay for a film about campus life in the ‘60s that marries Antonioni’s eye with an almost stream-of-consciousness unpacking of American issues like student protests and a country obsessed with firepower. Like almost all critics, Roger disliked the film, saying, “Their voices are empty; they have no resonance as human beings.” Generations later, that kinda feels like the point.
“Django”
There are a number of films set in the American West made by foreign filmmakers (definitely check out “Slow West” when you can, and Leone’s “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” deserves its place in the pantheon, of course), but this film represents them all through its sheer bravado. Sergio Corbucci’s influential vision introduced the world to Franco Nero (still working as recently as last week’s “In the Hand of Dante”) as the title character, a Union soldier who ends up in a battle between Confederate Red Shirts and Mexican revolutionaries. It’s a film that could be categorized as more of a “border movie” than an “American one” if it weren’t for the manner in which Corbucci injects so much dark imagery from this country, including KKK iconography.
Exceedingly violent for its time, “Django” was too easily dismissed upon release but gained a following over the years as its combination of brutal violence and Corbucci’s painterly eye made for a mesmerizing blend. It’s an angry movie, one that uses American history to tell a story of pain and redemption. It’s not a coincidence that Quentin Tarantino would use the same name for another story that recontextualizes American history through extreme violence in “Django Unchained.”
“Chinatown”
Roman Polanski’s upbringing and its intersection with the rise of the Third Reich have always felt like significant factors in unpacking this beloved story of displacement, corruption, and unchecked power. Screenwriter Robert Towne was inspired by the actual Owne River Valley scandal of 1908, one that led to a land grab that resulted in the formation of Chinatown, and the film is loosely based on the water wars of the 1930s in California, but it’s all filtered through a foreign auteur’s vision. At its core, “Chinatown” is that very American of genres, the noir, but it deconstructs so many of its tenets, including turning the femme fatale into a victim herself, and emphasizing that it’s the broken systems of this country that will always win.
If Polanski just wanted to make a traditional historical noir after the success of “Rosemary’s Baby,” this film would have played a lot differently. Not only does the displacement of Polanski’s youth influence the tone here, but the way he captures the Oz-like nature of Los Angeles feels unique to someone who had to travel there from his own Kansas. As Roger said in his Great Movies essay, “Los Angeles, a city born in a desert where no city logically should be found.” It took a foreigner to craft this vision of an impossible city.
“The Apartment”
Austrian master Billy Wilder made a number of films set in America, but this 1960 masterpiece feels like his most strident commentary on the underbelly of his chosen country. One could make a case for “Double Indemnity” or especially “Ace in the Hole” to take this spot, but there’s something insidiously American about the story of “The Apartment” in how it looks at how the corporate machine can grind up those who attempt to use it. Jack Lemmon plays an insurance clerk who allows the people who employ him to use his apartment to cheat on their wives. When he falls for an elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine, he doesn’t know she’s the mistress of his company’s head of personnel.
One of the first true examinations of how work and life would increasingly become untied in the American populace, “The Apartment” is both funny and heartbreaking, a movie that’s somehow light on its feet while also being remarkably dark in its subtext and themes. As Roger pointed out in his Great Movies essay, Lemmon and MacLaine’s characters are both “slaves to the company’s value system.” He also says something so perfect here and gets at why a Wilder film needed to be on this list: “Wilder pictures don’t play as period pieces but look us straight in the eye.”
“Stroszek”
Werner Herzog has made several films that could take this spot, but his 1977 comedy is his most aggressively American, at least what it was a half-century ago. Bruno S. plays Stroszek, a West Berlin street performer who moves to Wisconsin with a prostitute named Eva. Shot in Wisconsin and North Carolina, “Stroszek” was filled out by local non-actors, giving it almost a non-fiction feel as Herzog and his leading man, playing a variation on himself, explored what it means to be an American. This one could arguably fall into the disclaimer at the beginning of this piece regarding immigrant stories, but it’s such a unique vision of unheralded corners of the country that it feels like it should qualify. And we gotta have a Herzog.
Like a lot of Herzog’s work, “Stroszek” is a strange genre hybrid in which one can feel the lines blurring between reality and fiction. Ebert tells the story in his Great Movies essay that Herzog and the beloved Errol Morris were going to dig up a grave on Ed Gein’s property, but the documentarian never showed, but Herzog stumbled onto the mechanic shop that would serve as a setting for the film. There’s a reason that Ebert called it “one of the oddest films ever made.” He smartly notes that Herzog seems to be adding detail on the spot, letting the film and its setting take him where they want to go. How very American.
- Apple TV’s “Silo” Falters in Transitional Third Season (July 2, 2026)
It can often be a blessing and a curse when a series gets a two-season order. Yes, it’s nice to give creators a vote of confidence to extend their storytelling across multiple seasons. On the other hand, it sometimes leads to seasons like the third of Apple TV +’s once-excellent “Silo,” an outing that feels far too much like table-setting for the fourth and final chapter. Don’t get it wrong: This is still intelligent, ambitious science fiction. But there’s a sense of urgency that surged through the first two seasons that’s just lacking here. Splitting the storytelling between two time periods, tied together through a theme of corruption and false narratives, hints at the impressive reach of the writing this season, but it’s one of the choices that also leads to a sense that this season is a bridge instead of a destination. “Silo” has been one of the best shows on TV during its first two season; it’s just barely good enough in is third to keep viewers excited to see how it all ends.
The last season of “Silo” ended with two serious cliffhangers regarding the mortality of two characters so come back after you’ve watched the third season premiere if you don’t want to know how at least one of them ended. Whether or not Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) survived the fireball in the season-two climax is held for long enough that it won’t be spoiled here, but we learn quickly that Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) made it back from Silo 17 to her people, who she now serves as the silo’s Mayor. The small problem is that Juliette doesn’t remember what happened to her with Jimmy (Steve Zahn) and the other silo. And her amnesia is more than just a product of the explosion, as we learn that she is being drugged to keep her memories repressed. How people in power rewrite history to serve their needs is one of the strongest themes of season three as Juliette, a former leader of the rebellion, has become a pawn in a game to keep the people of the Silo in check.
Who’s playing this game? Believe it or not, Camille (Alexandria Riley) moves to a central role this season as the Wizard of this Underground Oz chooses her to be its liaison, replacing Bernard as a reticent villain for much of the season, to the surprise of her husband Robert (Common, doing his best work of the series to date this year). Part of the problem with season three is how much it sidelines previously fascinating characters like Juliette, Jimmy, and Bernard in favor of people like Camille, Knox (Shane McRae), and Shirley (Remmie Milner). It’s not that these performers are necessarily bad, but they have big shoes to fill when it comes to carrying “Silo” and there’s a bit of stumbling, especially in the first half of the season.
A similar problem invades the other half of the third season of “Silo,” which takes place much closer today than the show’s vision of a post-apocalyptic future. There was actually another sort of cliffhanger at the end of last year when the writers jumped back generations to introduce us to a congressman named Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and a journalist named Helen (Jessica Henwick), hinting that we might learn a bit more about the origins of the silos. Actually, it’s a lot more than you might have imagined as about half of the third season of “Silo” takes place in this timeline, introducing us to Daniel’s sister (Jessica Brown Findlay), along with characters played by Laura Innes, Reed Birney, Matt Craven, and Colin Hanks, doing a nice riff on the timely issue of the icy inhumanity of the uber-wealthy.
It’s a good cast, but the writing in the “origin” half of “Silo” just doesn’t hum with the same urgency as the rest of the show. It’s a nearly impossible task to pivot from the survivor story that people have been watching since the season premiere—one that’s had unexpected deaths and a simmering rising tension of a rebellion—to a “how we got here” narrative that simply lacks that tension. The truth is that how the silos were constructed and why isn’t as immediate as how Juliette might lead a revolution against them. Imagine “Snowpiercer” if half the movie was about the people who built the train and laid down the tracks.
The less-interesting characters taking the spotlight and the drag of the early timeline make for the first season of “Silo” that often drags. Having said that, the ensemble is still strong enough and the concept sturdy enough that the show never completely collapses. It’s also a season that can be interesting to unpack thematically. The American people in the Silo Construction arc are being lied to about their safety in a way that makes the headlines about tech sector doomsday prepping even more disconcerting, and the people of Silo 18 have been lied to for most of their lives about just about everything. At its core, it’s a show about how societies are manipulated by the Powers That Be, and that maintains.
Season three of “Silo” ultimately feels like an extensive bit of table setting. Without spoiling, multiple arcs and characters intersect in a finale that sets up season four for a climactic battle that could be one of the best shows of whatever year it airs. If that happens, this transitional season might arguably have all been worth it. Only then will we know if “Silo” will rise again.
Whole season screened for review. Returns on Apple TV+ on July 3rd.
