Twenty years from united

If Pig made for a bad "Friday night film," then United 93 certainly made for a bad "Saturday night film."

Of course, in the case of Pig, I imagined it to be an exploitation film, the kind of thing Nicolas Cage has been making lately (Mandy, Willy's Wonderland). It's not that at all.

With United 93, I knew what I was getting in to.

But this was no ordinary Saturday night. It was the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

I hadn't been planning to do anything to observe the anniversary, cinematically or otherwise. But when I posted yesterday's post about Pig -- or more precisely, about the long odds of Nicolas Cage's busy career allowing him to grow a beard -- I noticed the date stamp on the post: September 11th, 2021. It seemed like a pretty frivolous way to mark the anniversary or something that had an impact on me that was less than it was for some, but more than it was for many.

Quickly, a plan formed in my mind to watch the best film ever made about 9/11 -- Paul Greengrass' astonishing 2006 docudrama -- even though it was a Saturday night, the traditional night to let your mind relax on something funny or gory. 

(Side note: Something that fit both descriptions, in a weird way, was the warm-up, as my wife suggested we watch the 1990 Australian Sam Neill-starring film Death in Brunswick to start the evening.)

I don't put forward with any conviction my claim for the personal impact 9/11 had on me, but it's not nothing. There was actually a very real chance I could have been near the World Trade Center that day, if my life had gone just a little differently.

See, I worked on Wall Street in late 1999 and early 2000. Don't get excited; it was nothing glamorous. In fact, it was the opposite of glamorous, except for the part where you could get a company car to drive you home from work if you stayed late, not to mention a free dinner.

For about eight months I was an assistant to investment bankers at Goldman Sachs, a temp job after I finished up at Columbia Journalism School with no idea of what my first foray into that career field would be. I did all the things you would expect an assistant to do -- gathered receipts for expense reports, maintained calendars, did photocopying, answered phones. It was never going to be my long-term career, but it did make me familiar with that area, and I would frequently shop in the underground mall that was at the base of the World Trade Center. I remember it well, remember specific Christmas presents I bought there in 1999.

The path that led me away there started in the summer of 2000, when I got a job as an editor on a technical theater magazine. Logically, this should have at least kept me in New York through 9/11/2001, but the job was not a perfect fit for me -- it wasn't me, it was them. They were happy with my work, but I was not happy doing it, and a variety of factors prompted a relocation to Los Angeles, where I would live until 2013, in the spring of 2001.

So when the planes hit the buildings on that fateful Tuesday in September, I was not yet six months gone from Manhattan, and only 18 months gone from actually working on Wall Street. That wasn't the main factor in my staring at the television for the rest of that day and most of the next day -- we all did that -- but it definitely added an underlying poignancy.

During my third viewing of this astonishing movie, which actually reminded me of my recent viewing of WarGames in some respects (planes mysteriously disappearing from old school monitors, control room conversations about whether this was a drill or not), I thought about how the actions of the passengers on board the titular flight is something scarcely possible in today's trying times.

I don't mean it's not possible because they wouldn't summon that courage today. The impossible part is the way we jointly perceived them as heroes.

I happened to be talking to someone yesterday, irrespective of 9/11 entirely, how there is no such thing as a non-politicized event in our modern era. There is no modern issue that both political liberals and political conservatives can agree on. They'll argue whether the sky is blue or not, if only because to agree to a point the other side has made first is to lose an infinitesimal amount of political power and influence.

If 9/11 happened today, we wouldn't have been able to agree in an uncomplicated way with what Dick Cheney is said to have uttered when he heard about United flight 93, which was "I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane." For the purposes of my current argument, I'm not saying those words would be uttered by a Republican (like Cheney) and that the Democrats would be in the absurd position of trying to contradict them. I'm just saying that for any event that can seemingly only be perceived one way, the other side would be trying to find a way to poke holes in it.

I'll share another personal story about the events following 9/11.

The first time I went back to the movie theater was that Saturday. I'm sure that wasn't a particularly long layoff at that time -- from Tuesday, I probably would not have gone to the movies until Saturday anyway. But it seemed a significant enough occurrence -- a purposeful way of distracting myself from the events of the world -- that I clearly remember what movie I went to see, even though this was about six months before I started keeping my chronological list of viewings.

The movie was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, about as much of a subject matter divergence from 9/11 as a person could hope to find. My friend accompanied me, since he obviously needed the distraction too.

We both liked the movie, but the notable experience came when we exited the theater in Hollywood, near the base of the Hollywood Hills.

On the corner outside the theater, a group of people had gathered with American flags and candles for a vigil. My friend and I were drawn to it like iron filings to a magnet. 

This was not something that would have normally attracted either of us. We were the ultimate skeptics of anything too earnest. I mean, I'm an earnest guy in that I love movies with emotion, and I like to provide genuine warmth to friends and loved ones. But earnest displays of patriotism would have drawn eye rolls from me.

Not this day. Not anymore.

We might have stayed at that vigil for two hours. And it quickly became something a lot more rowdy than your average candlelight vigil. We were waving American flags in the streets as cars passed and honked. We chanted pro-America slogans, though I should be careful to clarify that they were not anti-Islamic slogans. 

If you saw something like that today, you'd immediately be wary of its potential for violence. The people who had gathered would be trying to start a fight with someone. They'd have the sort of potential energy that led to lynchings and mobs with torches and pitchforks.

Twenty years ago, though, this was just an honest outpouring of the emotions we all felt -- we ALL felt.

Not one side. Not the other. Both sides. Everyone.

I don't know what would be the equivalent of that today. You would have thought COVID would be it, possibly. But COVID was decidedly not it. It immediately became politicized and has become the sort of crisis that might define the different sides of the political spectrum for years, if not decades, to come.

There was the hope that 9/11 might define a different sort of unity between the parties, the sort of united front that the heroic passengers on that plane formed as they revolted against the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their target. 

It didn't last. And I don't know if we'll ever get it back again.

United 3

It took me nearly the whole movie to figure out why there was something weirdly inert about Clint Eastwood's The 15:17 to Paris, beyond the fact that it was shot and edited poorly, and the script spends a huge amount of time on inconsequential material.

At first I thought it was a result of Eastwood's famously or infamously fast pace of making movies -- I suppose "famously" if you're the studio, "infamously" if you are an audience that thought certain scenes demanded a second take. Eastwood usually yells "Cut!" and moves on, making him the anti-Stanley Kubrick. This would certainly provide an explanation for the lackluster performances of the actors.

It turns out that only explains the lackluster performance of actors like Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer, whose small handful of scenes might have all been shot in a single day. There's a different explanation for the three stars of the movie, who were unfamiliar to me, and it took me all movie to figure it out.

They aren't actors. They're the actual characters playing themselves.

It's something I might have known about this movie if it had generated more attention than a mere blip in the cinematic landscape when it came out back in February. But even with the prominent name of Eastwood attached, 15:17 came and went without a second thought for most of us.

I wouldn't have prioritized fitting it in for my 2018 list at all, except that it popped up on Stan, my Australian streaming service. And even though I disagree with his politics, a new Clint Eastwood movie interests me on its own terms. As I said in yesterday's post, I don't let the political views of the filmmakers get in the way of seeing a movie, which is of course the correct approach for a critic. With Eastwood, I'm interested in him partly because of what he's done in the past -- Unforgiven remains in my top 20 films of all time -- and partly because I'm fascinated he can make as many movies as he does, as quickly as he does, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. With Eastwood, it has, a number of times.

As an indication of how little I had looked into this movie, I had no idea what it was about. I suppose the title suggested to me some kind of European intrigue movie, as movies on trains often seem to involve spies or murder or some other bit of high concept action in which the train location is central to the appeal.

I had no idea it was a movie about a thwarted terrorist attack that really happened only three years ago. As such, I was really confused when the movie started with a flashback to the childhoods of three American kids. My extreme exhaustion at the time I started watching contributed plenty to this confusion. At 10 o'clock after a busy day, I thought Eastwood's 94-minute film was the only one I had any chance of fitting in before sleep claimed me. (And I didn't succeed, as it required a 30-minute nap in the middle for me to finish.)

The actual subject matter certainly makes more sense for Eastwood at this phase in his career, in which he has already made one film that celebrates the heroism of an ordinary American caught in an unusual situation where he needs to act quickly. In that case, though, Eastwood had the wisdom to cast Tom Hanks as Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger rather the man himself.

The actors weren't really nailing their scenes, though they weren't bad enough for me to identify them as definite novices for most of the movie. I attributed their stilted line readings to Eastwood's process. Only with a few minutes left did I say "Damn, these are the actual guys who thwarted this attack."

I suppose if I had known that going in it would have removed some of the suspense about whether they succeeded in stopping a terrorist from shooting up a train full of people, or at least from shooting up these guys themselves. And by writing this post I suppose I've ruined that suspense for you now. But Eastwood makes this movie in such a workmanlike fashion that it seems like suspense is not even part of the point. He merely wants to celebrate the achievements of these three young men who were traveling in Europe, two of whom were currently in the military. That's honorable, but his approach discards most of the narrative conventions designed to engross a viewer in the story.

As the actual grappling with the terrorist took only a few minutes in real life, and as that's only five percent of the movie even when it plays out in real time, Eastwood unnecessarily shows us long stretches of their childhood getting detentions from teachers and the like. As much time as is frittered away on that is also frittered away on previous legs of their trip, in which they stopped and partied in such cities as Rome and Amsterdam.

Eastwood does make a perfunctory attempt to foreshadow the act of heroism that awaits them on this train, but it's pretty awkward. Jenna Fischer's worst of a couple bad scenes is when she tells her son at the airport that she feels like something big is awaiting him, and verges on the hysterical. Then one of the guys keeps telling his friends that he feels like his life is pointing him toward something big and important. Neither of these actors, the pro or the amateur, sells the lines of dialogue naturally, and Eastwood seems like the amateur in the way he's staged these scenes.

Then there's also this weird anti-French sentiment in the film, which seems there also in a misguided attempt to create some "they should never have been there in the first place" drama. At various points in the film, various characters tell the guys that Paris isn't all that, and they talk on several occasions about skipping Paris. Skipping Paris? Say what you will about the French and the debatable narrative that America has always had to save France in military conflicts in which they've shown ineptitude, you can't just "skip Paris." It's one of the crown jewels of Europe. Get over your distaste for berets and go.

They do go, but even the train scene -- true as it may have been to history -- showcases America saving France's ass again. There's a weird absence of anyone approaching an authority figure on this train, as even after the Americans subdue the terrorist, there's no European security person who swoops in to assist. It's not until they can stop at the next station that the train is boarded by police, who weirdly have their guns all drawn even though someone likely would have been able to tell them that the suspect was already subdued. It's a clear case of too little, too late. The fact that it may have actually gone down this way doesn't do much to excuse it, though the American exceptionalism suggested by the event certainly explains Eastwood's interest in it.

In the final scene, Eastwood seems to honor the French, in a way, by having the French president (not playing himself) give out medals to the three Americans. And though the scene is filmed with a pomp and circumstance (and it's hard to imagine Donald Trump doing the same for three French nationals), it could also be read as another instance of the French supplicating to the Americans. "Thank you for saving us" is the takeaway message from that scene. Or more likely, "Thank you for saving us again."

In the end, the movie that may have provided Eastwood with the most inspiration is United 93. Not only does that movie feature a climactic scene in which ordinary citizens wrestle terrorists who are trying to take over a public transport, but United 93 also features a number of novice actors playing themselves, and therefore living through the events all over again as they make the movie. For obvious reasons it's not the Americans who overwhelmed the terrorists on that doomed flight who play themselves, it's air traffic controllers and other airport staff. That gives the film the sense of verite that is key to its punishing impact on us, while allowing professional actors to sell the tense climactic scene that's so agonizing. Eastwood's attempt at the same type of verite results in non-professionals selling the emotions of the climax, and his gestures toward realism elsewhere involve the inclusion of unimportant details that don't contribute to the narrative.

Advantage: United 93.

Reversing 9/11

It might have been a coincidence that Clint Eastwood's Sully was released just in time for the 15th anniversary of 9/11, but probably not. After all, the first responders and other bystanders must have had that seminal New York City event in their minds when they saw a plane go down in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009. How could you not. Airplanes flying too close to skyscrapers had been scarred in their memory. In our collective memory -- as a society, as a species.

The resulting rescue effort allowed heroes to arise, just as heroes arose (and sometimes gave their lives) on that September morning in 2001. The biggest hero that day did not "rise," but rather, descend, as Captain Chesley Sullenberger -- known to his friends, and soon to all of us, as Sully -- called on four decades of flying to assess (correctly) that a water landing might be possible after a bird strike knocked out both of his engines.

But what Sully's actions did that day were also to "reverse" 9/11, to give us a bit of wish fulfillment so unlikely that it seemed like it could only come from the movies.

Remember that unusual scene in Michael Haneke's Funny Games -- at least the American version (haven't seen the original) -- where the home invaders literally rewind the movie? Naomi Watts' character gets a leg up on one of them and shoots him, thereby steering the events toward a happy outcome for the tortured family. Instead, the other invader lunges for the remote control and rewinds the action to the point before she got that shotgun. This time, they don't slip up. Game over.

Sully operates like that, but in a positive way. The stuff on board the plane as it's going down is reminiscent of Paul Greengrass' United 93, in that characters recognize the fate that is about to befall them. As they did aboard flight 93 on 9/11, many hurriedly texted their loved ones what they assumed would be their final messages to them. Trying to look brave, but wiping away tears, and trying to wipe away their fear. Watching it, you are reliving that terrible fear all over again, the one Greengrass captured so poignantly.

But then ... they don't die.

None of them. Not a single one.

A couple sprained ankles and the like, and some near hypothermia in the river in January, but that's about it.

Which is of course the exact opposite of the number of people who died in each of the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11.

Well, it was enough to bring me close to tears on a number of occasions. Sully is the type of crowd pleaser that verges on the cornball from time to time, as might be expected from an 86-year-old conservative. Some of the execution and especially the music choices are reflective of an older person's mentality. But darned if this movie doesn't deliver on the exhilaration of surviving when you didn't think you were going to survive. The sheer emotional intensity of staring certain death in the face and not dying.

That story from nearly seven years ago was one of the happiest we'd seen in a decade, anywhere. It was fairly early on in my use of Facebook and I remember liking Sully's page. I used to get notifications about new material posted there every once in a while. Simply put, it was a story we wanted to keep reliving, to keep helping us heal from 9/11.

And we still are. I got emotional at the end of The Walk last year, as the very end is the only moment to draw an implicit connection to 9/11. And Sully got me too.

I wasn't in New York 15 years ago. But I was in New York 15 years and six months ago. I had lived there for nearly three years, part of which were spent working in the Wall Street area. In fact, I'd done some of my Christmas shopping in the mall that was under the World Trade Center.

We can't ever reverse 9/11. But movies like Sully help us deal with the grief and the psychological trauma that we -- collectively -- still hold close to the surface.

What's wrong with "what if"?

For the past two weeks, I've borne the burden of being one of the only people I know who's seen Anonymous ... and also one of the only critics who seems to have liked it. It's got exactly a 50 on Metacritic, which is, technically speaking, "mixed or average reviews." But the critics who like it seem sheepish about that fact -- those who don't are a lot bolder, buoyed by the implicit support of millions of snarky moviegoers, many of whom have not even seen it.

The reasons not to like Anonymous write themselves. It's directed by Roland Emmerich, an infamous hack responsible for idiocy like 10,000 B.C. It posits the idea that William Shakespeare did not write his own plays -- not a new idea, but also not a widely accepted one. And it includes numerous suppositions about what could have happened with other characters, many involving scandalous things about Queen Elizabeth -- such as the idea that she had several bastard children.

But it's this last point that people seem to be taking the most issue with, and not specifically because it besmirches Elizabeth's name. The doubts that Shakespeare wrote his own plays go back to before such luminaries and skeptics as Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud, and even the critics who didn't like the film can admit that it's an impressive accomplishment for its much-maligned director, who didn't seem capable of tackling such a subject. No, the critics looking to vent their aimless dislike for the film choose the fact that much of its action is imagined, and based only loosely on historical fact.

I say: So what?

Forget the fact that it's a movie, a work of fiction, and that it exists on the most fundamental level for the purpose of selling tickets. Loose interpretations of the facts, the altering of minor details, the rearranging of events in the chronology ... these things are to be expected in the attempt to make it work better as a narrative. And if done well, they contribute toward distilling the essence of truth, if not always literal truth.

So forget that we could allow this stuff for purely artistic reasons. What about the fact that pretty much every historical movie contains a sizable percentage of "what if"?

Since no one was present to record the conversations that occurred between 16th century noblemen, one must make guesses about the content of those conversations. It's the only way to go, unless you are so paralyzed with fears about inaccuracy that you stick to documenting only the things that exist in some kind of public record. And that would make for a pretty damn boring movie.

I guess what sticks in the craw of this film's detractors is how many liberties were apparently taken. To suggest that one of England's most celebrated queens spawned several fatherless children and jumped from bed to bed seems like sacrilege to some.

But if you parse that argument, it suggests that you should only make conservative guesses about things that may have happened with real people. If you play it safe, you are in the clear. But since when does a good drama play it safe? One of my favorite things about Anonymous is how much balls it has -- not only for its depiction of Elizabeth, but for suggesting that Shakespeare may have been just an opportunistic miscreant, wrapped up in unsavory deeds all the way up to and including actual murder. (This last is not stated outright but merely intimated.)

And why can't we take Shakespeare off this pedestal? I just finished listening to a podcast that's new to my repertoire called The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, where he talks to Anonymous screenwriter John Orloff about not only the incredibly ambitious structure of the script, but plenty of the issues related to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Orloff, a so-called Oxfordian (which means he doubts the authorship), and Goldsmith, a so-called Stratfordian (which means he doesn't), go at it pretty well regarding some of the contentious facts about the case. In every instance I thought that Orloff -- who has studied this more than Goldsmith, granted -- scored a point off Goldsmith, convincing me even more than his movie did that Shakespeare was not who history says he was. Without going into too many of the specifics, let me just outline a few: 1) It is known that both Shakespeare's parents and his children were illiterate. 2) No document exists from that period that was written in his hand, making him a total anomaly among his contemporaries. 3) The plays imply a knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Latin, and Shakespeare never went to school. 4) A third of his plays take place in Italy and describe it in great detail, though Shakespeare never actually traveled there. 5) All the conditions that likely needed to have been in place for him to write those plays, were actually in place for a nobleman like Edward de Vere, who's played by Rhys Ifans in the movie.

What's more, there's an actual academic theory that de Vere and Elizabeth were lovers, which gives a scholarly justification to even some of the film's most controversial "what if"s.

But let's dial back down to just the idea of "what if"s. We allow "what if"s to enter into many of the movies we love, in two distinctly different ways: 1) What if it did actually happen this way? 2) What if it had actually happened this way? Let's not forget that one of the most celebrated films of the last few years, Inglourious Basterds, includes an alternate reading of World War II that we know did not happen -- it's simply fantasy. Hitler never died in a rain of gunfire at the hands of a couple American commandos who were also setting a movie theater on fire. Yet that film was nominated for best picture and showed up near the top of a number of best-of lists.

But you don't even have to offer wild examples of alternate histories, and you don't even have to go particularly far into the past. One of the most realistic films of the past ten years was 2006's United 93, which imagines what might have happened on board the doomed September 11th flight when the passengers revolted against the terrorists, bringing the aircraft down in a Pennsylvania field. There are only a few things known about what actually did happen -- such as Todd Beamer saying "Let's roll" -- so the rest is up to the imagination of a screenwriter. Sure, that screenwriter (Paul Greengrass) stayed pretty much within the bounds of what "probably" happened -- he didn't suggest that aliens beamed aboard the plane and took out the terrorists.

But is saying that Elizabeth might have had illegitimate children the same thing as saying that aliens intervened with the September 11th attacks? I don't think it is. I think it's very possible that Elizabeth had illegitimate children, and just because we don't know about them doesn't mean we can't infer their existence based on things we do know ... and that we can't write a script in which they do actually exist.

And let's not forget that there is already a very famous movie -- an Oscar winner, in fact -- that imagines a lot of things that Shakespeare might or might not have done. That movie, Shakespeare in Love, was met with almost universal acclaim. There was no controversy about what was depicted, or at least no controversy that reached the layman -- no one ever had a big problem with the idea that Shakespeare might have shaken a bad case of writer's block at the hands of a muse who won his heart.

And you know why that is? Because it was unambiguously positive toward Shakespeare. If you do doubt that Shakespeare wrote his plays -- which I certainly now do, though it does not affect my appreciation of them in the slightest, because I still find it incredibly impressive that someone wrote them -- what's wrong with suggesting that he may have had some unsavory traits? A man who accepted a deal like that, to be a front for works he didn't write, is morally compromised at the very least.

And if you're saying you only want positive interpretations of Shakespeare on film, then you are just being an intellectually dishonest film fan.

Oh, and remember how I briefly mentioned Sigmund Freud earlier? He too is a character in a film releasing in the fall of 2011, which will have to suppose a lot of things about him: David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.

Okay, so you can't object to the idea that Shakespeare might not have written his plays, and you can't object to Emmerich's execution of the story, and you can't object to the details of the story -- unless you're simply saying you would have made other choices if you yourself were the screenwriter, and that's kind of splitting hairs.

So, like, what's your big problem?

Go see this thing before it whimpers out of theaters for good, with none of your money. Which it's worked harder than most films to deserve.

Good patriotism, bad patriotism

I'm not a particularly patriotic person.

I do love living in the United States and enjoy the freedoms we have here. But I don't believe that means I have to support every initiative Americans pursue in international affairs, especially when some of them have been massively wrong-headed. "America, love it or leave it" is what the most jingoistic Americans tell us, which disregards the third option of trying to refashion America according to the ideals you can imagine for it.

But I'm not immune to patriotism either. It's kind of funny how we always think that Republicans are the ones who characterize themselves as patriots, while we Democrats are more ready and willing to admit to doubts about America's foreign policy and how we represent ourselves in the international community -- to acknowledge occasionally feeling shame on behalf of the United States. But really, isn't patriotism mostly a function of which party is in office? I feel plenty patriotic when I see that my fellow countrymen have elected Barack Obama president, and the Republicans who are committed to making him a "one-term president" (as they are fond of saying) might be considered something other than patriotic as they refuse to raise the debt ceiling, in the hopes of seeing the country derailed while a Democrat is at the wheel.

And so I didn't want to just write today about movies that make me sick to my stomach with their overt love for God and country. I also wanted to write about the movies that have really gotten to me, made me feel American pride perhaps even in spite of myself.

Before we get started, let me just lay some groundwork. I don't necessarily love all the movies in one category nor hate all those in the other -- I'm concentrating specifically on the use of patriotism in those movies. And I'm not talking about movies that make me loathe being an American, because that can be a very valid artistic goal. It's manipulative uses of patriotism vs. those that aren't.

So without further ado, here are ten examples of good American patriotism at the movies -- and ten examples that aren't nearly so good. Let's start with the bad, because that's more fun. (Also, it'll allow us to end on a positive note.)

Alphabetically:

1) An American Carol (2008, David Zucker). Appropriate that we start with a movie that deals with the 4th of July itself. An American Carol is not such much a parody, even with David Zucker in the directing chair, as a hateful screed against liberals, in which a documentarian based on Michael Moore (named Michael Malone) is trying to push through his agenda to banish Independence Day. He's the butt of the film's nominal jokes as it takes on the loose format of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Pure Republican propaganda -- really unusual for a film starring recognizable Hollywood actors (Kelsey Grammer, James Woods, Jon Voight) -- the film wears its troop love on its sleeve, including several lingering shots on lines of men in uniform. Remember, it's not the message itself, but how it's being delivered to me -- in a movie that disavows the very usefulness of documentaries and people who want to uncover corruption.

2) Armageddon (1998, Michael Bay). The film that made me think of this blog topic in the first place. There's an undercurrent of jingoism in Bay's film, as a team of blue collar workers tell each other "Gentlemen, time to save the world," with a uniquely American kind of machismo. But the thing that's supposed to really make you weep with national pride is when the jets fly over at the end, after the aforementioned world has been saved. I still hold onto this as the primary reason I don't like this film, though there are surely plenty of others.

3) Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith). This one is almost too easy to include, but it's also from such a different time that it's almost cheating. One of the most groundbreaking films of all time is also one of the most loathsome, as the third act events you're supposed to cheer are the Ku Klux Klan coming in on horseback to vanquish the slaves. Or something like that. I'm reminded of it for this piece primarily because of its patriotic-sounding name, and in truth, Griffith does seem to be trying to get us swept up by his racist ideals for the country.

4) Delta Farce (2007, C.B. Harding). A trio of mistaken military reservists (led by Larry the Cable Guy) are accidentally dropped in Mexico, which they mistake for Iraq. Not only do the main guys have to be pretty stupid to make this mistake -- some representation of American intuitive powers -- but they actually take a can-do conservative approach when they end up with a real battle against a Mexican warlord, refusing to "cut and run" (those words are actually in the dialogue, as an attempt to echo a conservative catchphrase used to deride the values of anyone who sought to end the conflict in Iraq).

5) G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009, Stephen Sommers). It's American military types turned into a private army out to fight villains (specifically Cobra), but don't be confused by that into overlooking the message about the role of American military in world conflict. I just really dislike this movie so I saw this as an opportunity to get in another jab.

6) Independence Day (1996, Roland Emmerich). If there's a Michael Bay movie on this list there should also be a Roland Emmerich movie, and this is an obvious choice. I should have been super excited for humans (read: Americans) to defeat the alien scourge, but I remember feeling nothing but manipulated by the "This is our independence day!" speech by Bill Pullman as the American president. I also think that this movie prizes American sass as the only way to fight the aliens, typified by Will Smith shouting "Welcome to Earth!" and punching an alien in the face.

7) The Kingdom (2007, Peter Berg). While I didn't object to this movie in total, it did a hell of a job making Americans look like loose cannons and arrogant bastards in the guise of celebrating their take-no-bullshit method of solving problems. The problem in question is a green zone bombing in Saudi Arabia, and as the Americans clash with the Saudis on their method of investigating, they strut and swear and offend local culture in all the ways imaginable. An absurdly protracted firefight at the end, in which they are taking out bad Saudis to save good Saudis, doesn't do much to wipe the taste out of your mouth.

8) Man of the Year (2006, Barry Levinson). We are supposed to be filled with a rush of pride about democracy running on all cylinders when a late-night talk show host (someone like Steven Colbert) parlays a bunch of lame one-liners into getting elected for president. It would be one thing if the movie treated this topic as farce, like the Chris Rock vehicle Head of State (which is also terrible and which I considered including on this list), but it's more like ill-considered Frank Capra stuff, and Robin Williams is just annoying as hell. And then it strangely changes into a thriller.

9) The Patriot (2000, Roland Emmerich). Entry #2 for Roland Emmerich. I'm from New England and the American Revolution was something I grew up in and around, so if you really want to tap into my dormant sense of patriotism, it's through my Lexington heritage. Except if you're this movie, which includes Mel Gibson in lone vigilante mode, taking out British soldiers like an action hero, and probably the most exaggerated villain you are like to see on screen (Jason Isaacs' Colonel William Tavington), who's the caricature he is in order to leave zero doubt about our rooting interests and zero doubt that the Brits were depraved sadists.

10) Tears of the Sun (2003, Antoine Fuqua). I don't remember much about this movie except that a group of exceedingly brave Navy SEALs go into some sort of war-torn African nation, on a suicide mission to save a bunch of locals. Every American is unfailingly brave and Bruce Willis does a lot of stoical squinting. It almost felt like propaganda.

And now the good, some of which are admittedly guilty pleasures:

1) Air Force One (1997, Wolfgang Petersen). Call me crazy, but damned if I didn't feel a little rush of pride seeing "my president" (Harrison Ford in this case) defend his private jet against a bunch of Soviet terrorists. I suppose the line "Get off my plane!" could have gone in the other category as easily as this one, but there's something sort of thrilling about seeing a political figure of this stature involved in physical altercations, instead of just altercations of state. I also felt the tension in the scenes where the terrorists manhandle him and his family. What can I say, it suckered me.

2) Apollo 13 (1995, Ron Howard). Another battle against the Russians in the form of the space race, Apollo 13 is not overtly about American patriotism or even Americans at all -- it's about brave people with the grim determination to do what's needed. And they don't even have an altruistic mission, per se -- they are just trying to save themselves. However, there's something consummately American about this film, filled as it with NASA pride, and just a bunch of role players at all levels, buckling down to solve an almost impossible problem. I like to think that that's the core of what it means to be American.

3) Dave (1993, Ivan Reitman). Another movie about believing in your president, and this time it's Capra done right. Kevin Kline is wonderful in the role of a regular guy who's a doppelganger for the president, and secretly steps into the president's shoes when the president has a stroke under scandalous circumstances. It's interesting how a movie that is essentially founded on a corruption of the constitution can also have such optimism about American politics. The earnest changes Dave tries to make in the government, as well as admitting to "his" wrongdoing (it's actually the wrongdoing of his predecessor), gives us all hope about what we can accomplish within the political system -- and once he's back to his regular life, Dave intends to do it all again, this time honestly, by starting a grass roots campaign to run for local office.

4) Deep Impact (1997, Mimi Leder). A chance to bash on Armageddon again in the form of putting its rival in the "right" (not politically but morally) group of American patriotism. By couching the survival of the human race not in American terms but human terms, Morgan Freeman's President Tom Beck showcases American determination without calling attention to it, thereby making it seem all the more wise and enlightened. It's amazing that two such similar movies could be handled so differently and create such a divergent impression in us.

5) Glory (1989, Edward Zwick). An answer to Birth of a Nation 75 years later? No Civil War movie has a more profound appreciation for the stoic righteousness of the North than Glory, Edward Zwick's masterpiece (most of his other films are not even in the same ballpark). Denzel Washington and the aforementioned Freeman are both terrific, but it's the selfless sacrifices of Matthew Broderick's Robert Gould Shaw that really stick with me. Perhaps this film is just singularly effective on me because of my white guilt, but Glory reminds us that the fight to abolish slavery was in some cases taken as personally by whites, who did not specifically stand to benefit from it, as by blacks. Equality among men was what the United States was founded on, a philosophy worth dying for.

6) Red Dawn (1984, John Milius). Another guilty pleasure here, and another involving the Russians. Perhaps it's just proof that the extent to which we feel patriotism is the extent to which the enemy seems truly evil, but back in 1984, it seemed very real to me that the Russians could invade and occupy the U.S. Therefore, this group of brat packers who were hiding out and attacking, to defend our country against its occupying army, really resonated with me.

7) Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg). Americans again going up against impossible odds, without calling attention to themselves and just doing their duty. There are so many things Spielberg's film does right that I barely think of it as a film that caused me to feel patriotism, specifically -- perhaps it's just a sign of Spielberg's success at getting us to care about his characters that makes me feel so much pride when they achieve their mission, even if it does feel like a hollow victory to them. More than anything, there's got to be one movie in here where we get to hate Nazis, and Saving Private Ryan is a perfect movie to honor on Independence Day.

8) Swing Vote (2008, Joshua Michael Stern). I'm not sure how well this underdog movie fits the list, but I felt compelled to include it mostly to shine some light on it. You may recall that it's founded on a very unlikely scenario, that a single man in a single voting district (Kevin Costner) gets a chance to cast a vote that will determine the American presidency. The admittedly exaggerated setup works, however -- both as a chance to poke mild fun at the lengths to which politicians will go for victory, but ultimately, to focus attention on the idea that every vote counts. Americans' civic duty to vote is always a valuable lesson, and Swing Vote goes about this lesson the right way -- in addition to being pretty funny in spots.

9) Three Kings (1999, David O. Russell). Another odd choice here, as this film deals primarily with opportunistic soldiers in Iraq who want to steal some gold. However, I'm including it a) because it's really good, and b) because Russell gives his characters souls as the narrative moves on, as they make the decision to become involved rather than walk away when innocent Iraqis are killed by Saddam Hussein's goons. I don't suppose it's anything outside the realm of typical hero stuff, where the protagonists have to do the right thing in order for us to root for them. But it doesn't change the fact that I feel a rush of pride and emotion during that scene where the Iraqi played by Cliff Curtis, along with his group of refugees who have just been led to safety, stare at the American soldiers as they're being dragged away, raising a hand to wave. This solemn gesture of gratitude speaks far more than words. Even if it's a manufactured moment out of pure fiction, the moment makes me feel that ideal America has such a hard time attaining -- actually helping a native population with its presence, rather than just complicating the situation.

10) United 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass). And we end on the other film (in addition to Armageddon) that inspired this piece. The most patriotic I have ever felt in my life was the weeks after September 11th, when I waved flags on several occasions and participated in several candlelight vigils. It was like all my sense of irony had been temporarily tucked away. The only film version of the events of 9/11 that has made me feel that way again is United 93. For most of the running time I'm just marveling over Greengrass' naturalistic recreation of the events, so naturalistic that it almost seems like a documentary (a feeling supported by the fact that some of the air traffic controllers played themselves). But the tensions of the final 20 minutes of the film truly level me, specifically when the passengers of the doomed airplane rise up to overwhelm the terrorists holding them hostage. The scene fills me with adrenaline and pride -- not specifically because these are Americans defending their country, but because they're people doing the right thing.

And that's a good summary of this piece on the whole. True patriotism comes from a pride over people doing the right thing, not over showy displays of the red, white and blue.

But people doing the right thing can be from any country, and perhaps that's why I don't consider myself a patriot per se -- I don't feel like Americans are inherently more likely to rise to the seriousness of the occasion than people elsewhere. Being American alone does not mean you are more likely to behave morally in a grave situation.

But because I'm an American, I do have a bias toward seeing Americans doing the right thing. It's like when I hear that the star of my hometown sports team has done something charitable -- I believe it reflects on the team, and likewise, on me, even if it's just his own individual act of goodness, the kind of which any human is capable.

So on this 4th of July, let's just all try to be good humans. It's probably the most patriotic thing we can do.

And, it will reflect well on our team.