Twenty-Five Movies to Celebrate America at 250

My wife learned America the way most foreigners do, McFly before Madison. She had come from Cuba, where the state issues its citizens their loves along with their ration books, and I set out to correct the deprivation the only way a man raised on American movies would.

We started with Back to the Future, because a country that dreams in DeLoreans and second chances confesses something true about itself before any civics text can. Then Thirteen Days, so she could see the island that she fled bring the world within a hair of the end, and watch a young president’s prudence walk it back. Call it naturalization by double feature.