The best movie set in each state

Even though Robert Mulligan’s To Kill A Mockingbird was released just two years after Harper Lee’s seminal novel, the film still had a massive legacy to contend with: Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her Depression-era tale of a white Southern lawyer who defends a Black man accused of rape. It’s fitting, then, that the film turned out to be an all-time great, too. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And while it didn’t bring home the big prize, Gregory Peck did win the Best Actor trophy for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. Lee was enamored with the film, too; she even called it “one of the best translations of a book to film ever made.” [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Fried Green Tomatoes, Selma, My Cousin Vinny

Although Insomnia features strong performances from Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and a deep in his wouldn’t-it-be-fun-if-I-played-a-serial-killer-period Robin Williams, the real star of this lesser-seen Christopher Nolan thriller is the oppressive brilliance of the Alaskan scenery. Set during that time of year when the sun literally refuses to stop shining on The Last Frontier, day or “night,” Nolan shoots Pacino as a man endlessly pursued by light. The film’s stand-out sequence: A claustrophobic dive into an icy Alaskan river, the air in the audience’s lungs burning as they wait to see if Pacino can emerge alive. [William Hughes]

Runners-up: The Edge, Into The Wild, The Grey, 30 Days Of Night

Raising Arizona’s title isn’t just a cute reference to the infant at the center of the Coen brothers’ slaphappy looney tune. One could also say that, between a diaper heist and the fugitive convicts, H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and Ed (Holly Hunter) raze Arizona, as well. That’s what happens when this unlikely couple steals the newborn quintuplet of a local furniture magnate (Trey Wilson), unleashing literal hell on their once-idyllic trailer park. Also, the state’s name is in the title. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Runners-up: Tombstone, Psycho, 3:10 To Yuma, My Darling Clementine

The Coen brothers’ biggest hit, True Grit, does little to romanticize the West, with Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn sweating whiskey as he’s drained of his goodwill toward the world. At war with Arkansas’ wilderness, while upholding its laws, Cogburn hunts the killer of 14-year-old Mattie Ross’ (Hailee Steinfeld) father across the Natural State. The Coens’ thrilling, melancholic Western presents a Wild West that’s decidedly cold toward the people trying to settle it. There’s no home on this range. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Runners-up: A Face In The Crowd, Sling Blade

Aside from the scenic drive through San Francisco courtesy of James Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock’s dreamy masterpiece drills into the myth of California via Stewart’s pursuit of a ghostly woman. Hitch transposes the dream of the West and the promise of tomorrow into Kim Novak’s Madeline, a woman possessed by the portrait of a dead woman. Vertigo’s haunting beauty finds the spirit of the state under the Golden Gate Bridge. Just don’t look down. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Runners-up: American Graffiti, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Boogie Nights, Bullitt, Bad News Bears (1976), Sunset Boulevardd, La La Land, Sideways, The Player, The Big Lebowski, Point Break, Double Indemnity, Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood

Colorado’s weather and history are all over Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 shocker, The Shining. Perched atop a snow-capped peak, the Overlook Hotel has remained a potent symbol of the Native American genocide and manifest destiny for decades—though that’s just one of many interpretations of Kubrick’s inscrutable masterpiece. What isn’t up for debate is the intensity in Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s twin (pun-intended) performances, which make the eternal horror of alcoholism and domestic abuse a visceral and unforgettable experience. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Runners-up: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Misery, BlacKkKlansman, Over The Edge, Jeremiah Johnson, Naked Spur

WASPs meet wraiths in this, quite possibly the single best film in Tim Burton’s whole filmography. Perfectly cast at every point, Beetlejuice is, from one viewpoint, a film about the ultimate showdown between New York vacation types and Connecticut townies, as Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis employ a never-better Michael Keaton to posthumously evict the obnoxious Deetz family from their beloved home. Burton’s blend of macabre and silly has never worked better, as he fills every frame of Beetlejuice with surreal, and hilarious, delights.[William Hughes]

Runners-up: Revolutionary Road, The Stepford Wives, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Swimmer, Mystic Pizza

David Fincher’s Fight Club deviates from Chuck Palahniuk’s book frequently, but the film’s conclusion makes it a Delaware staple. The story of a bored, ineffectual nobody (Ed Norton) who, with the help of the cooler-than-cool Tyler Durdin (Brad Pitt), starts an underground MMA club-turned-terrorist outfit, Fight Club could only take place in Delaware because of its ending. Considering all the credit card companies that call Delaware home, where else could Fincher stage the fall of Western capitalism as we know it? [Matt Schimkowitz]

Runners-up: Goosebumps, Empire Records

At the time of its release in 1983, critics were torn about Brian De Palma’s Scarface. Some claimed it was profane and needlessly violent; some called it one of the greatest gangster films ever made. Writer Oliver Stone sourced the 1929 film of the same name and transformed it from a Depression-era, Al Capone-inspired gangster flick into a sprawling modern immigrant story set in Miami. History has firmly sided with those who championed the film, as it’s grown in both popularity and acclaim over the years. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: The Florida Project, Magic Mike, Moonlight, Spring Breakers, The Birdcage, Cocoon

The Color Purple, the acclaimed film adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the struggles of Black women in early 20th century rural Georgia, has a complicated legacy. But it holds up thanks to the powerful performances of its talented cast, namely Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey. This was Steven Spielberg’s eighth film, and his first serious drama after a series of action-adventure blockbusters. The story’s legacy continues this December, when we’ll be getting a new version based on the recent Broadway musical and produced by Spielberg and Winfrey. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Deliverance, Gone With The Wind, Baby Driver, Driving Miss Daisy

Many films shot in Hawaii are rom-coms or fantasies that take advantage of the 50th state’s beautiful beaches and exotic flora. Then there’s From Here To Eternity, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1954. This tough-minded combination of combat film and romantic melodrama was shot at the decidedly unglamorous Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu, where members of a rifle company, played by, amongst others, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, and Montgomery Clift, serve in the months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The film took a realistic—which is to say often unflattering—view of the petty grievances and interpersonal conflicts baked into American military service, making it stand out amongst pre-Vietnam war films. It also stands out for its iconic make-out sesh on the beach between Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, which was shot at Oahu’s Halona Cove. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Blue Hawaii, Blue Crush, Lilo & Stitch, The Descendants, 50 First Dates

If everything you know about Idaho comes from Napoleon Dynamite, well, you’re not too far off. Director Jared Hess, who co-wrote the script with his wife Jerusha, filmed the movie in Preston, the Idaho town where it’s set, and where he grew up. It portrays rural, small-town life with such specificity it could only have come from someone with a deep knowledge and appreciation of the state. That connection gives him a license to gently mock the residents as somewhat out of step with the modern world, but in a loving way. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: My Own Private Idaho, Bronco Billy

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off isn’t a good Illinois movie just because of the unforgettable romp through Chicago that hits all of the city’s highlights (Art Institute, Cubs game, sausage discussions). It’s because of that and the fact that its heroes specifically live in the suburbs just outside of Chicago—a perfect representation of the feeling of being just within reach of everything (like the city) that a lot of Illinois residents will recognize. [Sam Barsanti]

Runners-up: Wayne’s World, The Untouchables, Chicago, The Sting, Halloween, Medium Cool

Few movies have encompassed the smartass-but-there’s-corn-there vibe of really good Midwestern art better than Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story, based on the short stories by beloved humorist Jean Shepherd. Shepherd is the movie’s secret weapon, too: Without his wry narration, the film could fall apart into nostalgic cuteness and bunny pajamas. But A Christmas Story works miracles because it never forgets that childhood genuinely kind of sucks, emphasizing the subversive comedy and wit that bubbles so readily beneath the politeness of a rural small town. [William Hughes]

Runners-up: Hoosiers, Breaking Away, Rudy

“Is this heaven?” “It’s … Iowa.” Field Of Dreams is a movie about America’s pastime and the weird magic it holds, crossed with a timeless message about fathers and the lessons they pass on even without realizing it. A curious trick the movie plays is that it’s about special people going to Iowa because a special person made Iowa worth going to, which lends the state itself a share of that weird magic. The movie couldn’t take place anywhere else. [Sam Barsanti]

Runners-up: The Bridges Of Madison County, The Music Man, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Straight Story

No one could serve sentiment sans schmaltz quite like director Peter Bogdanovich. Paper Moon is a valentine, not just to an often overlooked part of the country, but to the relationship between a father and daughter that is sour as often as it’s sweet. Moses and Addie—played by Ryan O’Neal and real-life daughter Tatum O’Neal—spend most the film on the road, traversing a plain so barren it borders on void. But—here’s the thing—they have each other. [Drew Gillis]

Runners-up: Picnic, Splendor In The Grass, The Wizard Of Oz

Coal Miner’s Daughter, the 1980 drama based on the life of country music icon Loretta Lynn, was nominated for seven Oscars and helped codify the modern biopic form. Sissy Spacek won the Oscar for Best Actress, playing Lynn from age 13, when she met the man she’d eventually marry (played by Tommy Lee Jones), until well into her 30s. The movie, which was shot in Kentucky’s Letcher County and thereabouts, is told with honesty, sensitivity, and an almost documentary-like authenticity that comes from being directed by the Englishman behind the Up documentary series, Michael Apted. Coal Miner’s Daughter captures both ends of Lynn’s rags to riches life, one that’s uniquely American and uniquely inspiring. [Mark Keizer]

Runner-up: Harlan County, U.S.A.

Steamy and sultry New Orleans has proven a unique backdrop for many films, but the one whose style, substance, and florid emotionality seem to match it best is 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Marlon Brando, in only his second film and leaping from the screen with brute sexual force, plays the animalistic brother-in-law to Vivien Leigh’s Blanche, the delicate Southern flower living in the French Quarter and in the throes of an emotional collapse. Director Elia Kazan insisted that the film hew closely to Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, which led to many fights with the censorship czars at the Catholic Legion of Decency. But even that didn’t stop this four-time Oscar winner from being so bold and uncompromising that it still packs a punch 72 years later. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Angel Heart, Interview With The Vampire, Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Steel Magnolias, Panic In The Streets, Cat People, The Princess And The Frog 

There are any number of reasons why Stephen King sets most of his stories in Maine—he lives there, for one—but few of his movie adaptations capture the seclusion and loneliness of America’s easternmost state better than The Shawshank Redemption (a movie that is literally about being secluded and lonely in a prison). It also says a lot, no offense to Maine, that Andy Dufresne’s idea of freedom is getting 3,000 miles away from the state. [Sam Barsanti]

Runners-up: In The Bedroom, It, Carrie, Cider House Rules, The Iron Giant

Maryland native John Waters’ most successful and most mainstream film (at least by John Waters standards) is unquestionably Hairspray. Through the lens of Baltimore teen Tracy Turnblad (played by Ricki Lake), who follows her dream of joining a local dance show in 1962, it captures the moment when the fight for civil rights and integration was starting to take hold in urban centers, despite the efforts of racists to maintain the status quo. The film became so popular it inspired a musical, and then another film based on that musical. The original has the edge, though, for its unconventional casting, including Divine as Tracy’s mom Edna, Debbie Harry, Ruth Brown, and Sonny Bono. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Diner, The Blair Witch Project, Avalon, And Justice For All

The “Boston movie” is a genre of its own—just ask Seth Meyers—but many of them simply want what The Departed has. The flamboyant masculine villainy of Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello is strangely lovable; where a movie like The Town tells us about the families these neighborhood guys have forged, Costello almost seems like a guy you’d want to be your dad. You begin to realize why, perhaps more than other major American cities, Boston stays so townie. Every place has a mythology, and the thrilling tragedy of The Departed is not only unique Massachusetts; it’s just damn good. [Drew Gillis]

Runners-up: The Fighter, Love Story, The Verdict, Spotlight, Friends Of Eddie Coyle, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Gone Baby Gone, Manchester By the Sea, Patriots Day, Mystic River

The really miraculous thing about 8 Mile is how good it is despite the many ways it could’ve gone wrong. Musician biopics are a tough genre to pull off without feeling too glossy or untrue to life (ahem, Bohemian Rhapsody). And the idea of telling a hip-hop story set in Detroit from a white guy’s perspective raises, on paper, approximately 10,000 different red flags. But, on screen, 8 Mile works because of its emotional honesty; Eminem turns in a surprisingly vulnerable, intense performance as B-Rabbit, an underground rapper trying to make it big, and the film never flinches in showing the desperateness of his situation. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Roger And Me, RoboCop, Grosse Pointe Blank, The Evil Dead, American Pie

The finest film ever named after a North Dakota city (but which takes place primarily in a frozen-over Minnesota), Fargo still has a decent claim as the crown jewel of Joel and Ethan Coen’s careers: It’s a meditation on the banal, “aw geeze” nature of human evil existing in bleak but easy harmony with the brothers’ career-long love of pitch-black comedy. And yet, in the creation of Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson, the pair also contributed mightily to the portrayal of Real Good on the cinema screen. The world might be full of ostensibly polite people willing to do terrible things for “a little bit of money,” but at least Margie’s still out there on the Brainerd streets, never flagging in her effort to do what’s right. [William Hughes]

Runners-up: A Prairie Home Companion, Grumpy Old Men, A Serious Man, The Mighty Ducks, Juno, Purple Rain

In The Heat Of The Night is, ostensibly, a noir mystery about a murder in Mississippi, but that description doesn’t speak to what the film really has on its mind: This is a movie about racism, about the genuine danger of simply existing as a Black person in the South. There was danger in making the film, too: Sidney Poitier, who plays Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective from Philadelphia detained by a white police officer in Mississippi, told director Norman Jewison he wouldn’t go south of the Mason-Dixon line during filming because he’d been chased and threatened in the past. In a 2017 reflection on the film, Jewison noted how controversial the film was and admitted he had no idea how it would be received. But critics loved it, and In The Heat Of The Night won the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with four other trophies, at the 1968 Oscars. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Mississippi Burning, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Released in 1944 and set just before the 1904 World’s Fair, Meet Me In St. Louis is a quaint throwback to a simpler time (actually two, if you count the period in which it was made). This sweet slice of Americana starring Judy Garland introduced the public to musical classics like “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “The Trolley Song,” and cemented her status as a leading lady. Young love and childish antics disrupt the lives of a family as they face a potential move from their beloved St. Louis to New York City. But this being a classic Golden Age musical, it all works out in the end. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Parenthood, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Road House, Waiting for Guffman, Winter’s Bone, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Gone Girl

If nothing else, director Robert Redford’s gorgeous and refined-to-a-fault 1992 drama A River Runs Through It might make you want to take up fly fishing in Montana. Or at least wade in the shimmering waters of the Big Blackfoot River where Craig Schaffer and Brad Pitt—in his breakout role—play brothers in the early 20th century whose lives take divergent paths. Based on Norman Maclean’s autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It may contain one of the lazier metaphors for the unyielding and uncontrollable onward flow of life, but Redford makes it a powerful and heartfelt one. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Legends Of The Fall, Thunderbolt And Lightfoot, Arrival, Power Of The Dog 

Alexander Payne’s caustic high school satire Election suggests there’s not much you wouldn’t do to get out of Nebraska—at least, if you’re hyper-ambitious Type A personality Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon, channeling a darker edge that we’d love to see pop back up in her filmography from time to time). Bouncing between narrators (including Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, and Matthew Broderick as Flick’s teacher/nemesis), Payne fleshes out a world in which a high school election is both intensely trivial and the stuff that people are made or broken by. And it generates four fascinating, frequently darkly funny character studies in the process. [William Hughes]

Runners-up: Citizen Ruth, About Schmidt

The advantage that Ocean’s Eleven has over other Las Vegas movies—in addition to arguably being one of the most fun movies ever—is that it’s all glitz and glamor. Even though it’s about a heist, it’s about an idealized Las Vegas where everything is a big exciting show and everybody could get rich if they, ahem, play their cards right. The real Vegas might have a darker, grimier edge, but this is how Hollywood should see Nevada. [Sam Barsanti]

Runners-up: Leaving Las Vegas, The Hangover, Casino, Viva Las Vegas, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Meta before meta was a thing, the 1981 tearjerker On Golden Pond features Henry Fonda and his daughter Jane—who famously had a frosty relationship—as a father and a daughter with a frosty relationship. Reconciliation is inevitable but it’s delivered with such white gloved-honesty and jewel-like emotional precision that the movie earns your tears. As the lioness in winter opposite Fonda’s lion, Katherine Hepburn plays Fonda’s wife as the no-nonsense smartest person on Golden Pond—which is actually New Hampshire’s Squam Lake. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Jumanji, Lolita, Return Of The Secaucus Seven, What About Bob? 

Winner of eight Oscars—including Best Picture—1954’s all-time classic On The Waterfront is an uncompromising look at mob corruption in New Jersey labor unions and director Elia Kazan’s response to those who criticized him for naming names while testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Marlon Brando, as the washed-up boxer who “coulda been a contender,” displays his wounded heart for all to see in a performance often credited—along with his smoldering turn in A Streetcar Named Desire—with redefining the craft of screen acting. Shot in Hoboken and featuring actual longshoremen as extras, it’s a tough, brutal, and tender story of a compromised hero who finds his long-buried conscience on the waterfront. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (1947), Clerks, Garden State, Cop Land

When watching and considering Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 Best Picture Oscar nominee High Noon, it helps to remember that this riveting Western about a morally upstanding marshal forced to fight injustice alone when the townsfolk refuse to help was written by Carl Foreman, who heroically declined to name names during the Hollywood Blacklist. Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar as marshal Will Kane, who awaits the arrival of his presumed executioners, a band of murderous outlaws led by the gunslinger he sent up the river years earlier. Taking place almost in real time (the events depicted in the film are about 20 minutes longer than the film itself), High Noon resonates across the years because every era requires its citizens to wonder, in times of great upheaval, are you Will Kane or a coward? [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Ace In The Hole, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid 

New York City is one of the most often-used filming locations in the United States (and that’s to say nothing of the rest of the state). The Manhattan skyline is perhaps the most famous in the world, a shorthand for American success and excess. But most people don’t live in those penthouses; in fact, you can only see that skyline from less glamorous places like New Jersey or Staten Island. If you’re Spike Lee, you spent most of your youth seeing that skyline from Brooklyn. Set in Bed-Stuy, Do The Right Thing explores another American ideal—the melting pot—and the violence that can come with it. The film is both hyper-local and wonderfully broad; the mark of an artist finding universality. [Drew Gillis]

Runners-up: Mean Streets, Sweet Smell Of Success, Ghostbusters, Taxi Driver, The Apartment, When Harry Met Sally, Dirty Dancing, Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Arthur, Breakfast At Tiffanys, Wall Street, Saturday Night Fever

Like all great sports movies, Bull Durham isn’t really about sports, but it works marvelously as a baseball picture and a cockeyed, improbable but thoroughly charming love story that still finds time to suggest a good wedding gift (candlesticks). Kevin Costner plays the soulful, minor-league lifer reluctantly called upon to prepare goofball pitcher Tim Robbins for the big leagues. But it’s Susan Sarandon, as the sexy, sunny but wonderfully daft baseball evangelist, who’s the heart of the film. The stadium where Costner’s Durham Bulls played is now home to the North Carolina Central University Eagles. The real Bulls play at Durham Bulls Athletic Park where the famous snorting bull sign lives on … and, yes, if a Bulls players hits the sign, they still win a steak. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Norma Rae, George Washington, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cape Fear, Blue Velvet

Look, no one is going to be out here arguing that Leprechaun is a great movie, but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. Jennifer Aniston makes her film debut in this horror-comedy flick that has the good sense to lean hard on the humor. Warwick Davis plays the titular leprechaun, shining shoes and fixing go-karts in between getting revenge on those who stole his pot of gold. The franchise as a whole varies wildly in quality, but the original Leprechaun remains a quintessential midnight movie. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: A Star is Born (1937), Jesus Camp, Welcome To Leith, The Overnighters

The 1988 black comedy Heathers is set in the town of Sherwood, Ohio, (appropriately situated in the county of Defiance) and takes aim at snotty suburban teens and their narrow-minded parents. Winona Ryder and Christian Slater give some of the most memorable performances of their careers as a pair of outsiders whose attempt to put the mean and popular crowd in their place spirals way out of control. It’s a wickedly smart teen satire that hasn’t lost any of its bite 35 years later. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Tommy Boy, Major League, American Splendor, A Nightmare On Elm Street

The Outsiders, an adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s instant-classic young adult novel, has a distractingly over-the-top cast of ’80s teenage heartthrobs, but don’t let that fool you: it’s one of those rare and special films that feels authentic in its portrayal of teenagers. Director Francis Ford Coppola worked closely with Hinton on the script, which faithfully sticks to the novel’s story about a conflict between two gangs—one poor, one rich—in 1960s Oklahoma. Hinton’s novel has endured over the years because of its relatability and, with his film adaptation, Coppola perfectly captured the oh-so-familiar ache of wanting to belong. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Oklahoma!, Rumble Fish, Twister, Cimarron

One of the great anti-establishment allegories, Czech director Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of a group of psychiatric patients who fight the entrenched authority and rigid rule represented by the hospital’s Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Their rebellion is led by a wise-cracking Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy, a disruptor dropped into this closed system to break down the walls between the repressed and those who repress them. The film was shot at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, as Forman insisted on shooting in an actual psychiatric facility. Released during the tail end of the Vietnam War, Cuckoo’s Nest was the right film at the right time and Oscar rewarded it with The Big Five—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress—the first time a film won that exalted quintet of awards since 1934’s It Happened One Night. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Stand By Me, The Goonies, Drugstore Cowboy, Mr. Holland’s Opus

One of the greatest films of all time, Rocky tells the story of a blue collar boxer fighting his way to the top (or near the top, since Rocky loses at the end) with nothing but determination and the love of a good partner. It’s a film with so much spirit that Philadelphia essentially adopted it as the city’s entire personality. It doesn’t just take place in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is part of its very bones. [Sam Barsanti]

Runners-up: Witness, The Sixth Sense, Groundhog Day, Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Story, Silver Linings Playbook, The Deer Hunter

Cher plays a witch. Do you really need to know anything else? George Miller’s The Witches Of Eastwick takes quite a few liberties with the source material (John Updike’s 1984 novel of the same name), twisting Updike’s dark and mostly serious tale into something much sillier and funnier. But it’s hard to argue with the results: Jack Nicholson seems to be having the time of his life playing a horny devil, and the three witches (Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon) share a believable, fun chemistry as they come into their powers. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: The Conjuring, Dumb And Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, Cheaper By The Dozen, Reversal of Fortune

It’s easy to watch The Big Chill and see a story about why selling out is, if not right, at least inevitable. These characters believe that they needed to grow up, settle down, and contribute to a society that they once mocked. But their obsession with the culture that boomed when they were mere babies—that of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll—hangs over them like a dead friend. The Big Chill feels real, 40 years later, because it doesn’t preach; it doesn’t venerate our reformed hippies, but it doesn’t indict them either. These college friends reunite at a beach house for their friend’s funeral and wonder: was it all worth it? Did we ever mean it? An answer is a whole lot harder to come by than the memories are to revisit. [Drew Gillis]

Runner-up: The Notebook

One of the great modern directing debuts, Terrence Malick’s Badlands is better remembered than the real-life crime spree that inspired it. Somehow, Malick turned the 1957 murder rampage by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend into a lyrical and gorgeously photographed achievement in myth-making, where the audience is pushed to romanticize lost lovers Kit and Holly—played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek—and not judge them. Indeed, as they drive across an American West as barren as their souls, brutality has never looked so beautiful. While the pair’s murderous road trip also takes them to Montana, it’s in South Dakota where Kit murders Holly’s father and their odyssey begins. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Deadwood: The Movie, Incident at Oglala, Wild Bill, The Revenant

The city of Nashville is known for its music, and the film that bears its name has plenty of it. Roughly an hour of Robert Altman’s 160-minute runtime is devoted to musical performances, punctuated by its colossal ensemble mocking, scheming, and gossiping. At times, Nashville can feel like a whole miniseries compressed into a theatrical cut, disorienting with its teeming cast. But it’s the darkly comic denouement that makes this a classic film; the speed with which these characters return to music in the face of tragedy probes whether entertainment is really a balm, or a distraction that politicians, performers, and the entire public are willing participants in. If country folk are often derided as simple, Nashville is anything but. [Drew Gillis]

Runners-up: Inherit The Wind, Hustle And Flow, Mystery Train, Walk The Line

If you’re looking for an authentic portrayal of the true heart of Texas, standing in for a crumbling post-war America, you can’t do better than The Last Picture Show. Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 black-and-white masterpiece based on Larry McMurtry’s novel isn’t quite a Western, but it’s clearly in conversation with the genre’s myths. It stars a young Jeff Bridges as a detached high school athlete who pursues a lovely and distant young Cybill Shepherd to the soundtrack of old Hank Williams tunes. Other familiar yet fresh faces, including Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn, fill in the portrait of a dusty and desolate Texas town that’s seen better days. The film, however, remains timeless. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Friday Night Lights, Giant, No Country For Old Men, Dazed And Confused, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hell Or High Water

When it comes to Utah, the pickings for representational films that are also good are comparatively slim. Plenty of movies have been filmed there, sure, but a much smaller number are actually set in the Beehive State. Being in that select category is just one of the things that makes 127 Hours special. Danny Boyle’s riveting drama starring James Franco as an outdoor enthusiast who gets trapped in a canyon near Moab is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who chronicled the ordeal in his book Between A Rock And A Hard Place. Most people associate the film with the gruesome act Ralston has to commit to free his pinned arm from a boulder, but before that happens there’s lots of beautiful scenery of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park and its vibrant natural landscape. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Broken Arrow, Carnival Of Souls, Hereditary, SLC Punk!

Vermont is the perfect location for Dead Poets Society and the fictitious Welton Academy, a prestigious prep school designed to root out any hint of individuality or independent thought in its all-male student body. At least until Robin Williams’ John Keating comes along to challenge the institution with his romantic talk of poetry and free thought and seizing the day, to the delight of some (Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles) and the dismay of many (Kurtwood Smith, et al.). It’s the best and worst of New England society in the late 1950s, all baked into a beautiful, bittersweet tart. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: State And Main, The Trouble With Harry, Super Troopers

It’s basically impossible not to smile while watching Hidden Figures. That’s the goal of any feel-good movie, but Hidden Figures is a good film on top of that, which is a pretty rare combination. It tells the true story of three Black women (Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monáe) who, while working as “human computers” at NASA, were instrumental in the early days of the Space Race. Hidden Figures does exactly what it says on the tin—it shines a light on women who achieved great things but were overlooked when it came to remembering and honoring those achievements. This film finally gives them the recognition they always deserved. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Donnie Darko, Remember The Titans, The New World

America’s sweethearts Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks got a little meta in this quintessential rom-com, with some help from the queen of the genre herself, Nora Ephron. Sleepless In Seattle isn’t just about finding someone to love, it’s about the concept of romance itself, and the depiction of it in the movies. The scenes in Seattle—where Hanks’ character lives with his son—with its hilly streets, coastal waterways, and beaches, add to the film’s characteristic charm. Although the climactic love scene takes place at the Empire State Building in New York, it was filmed on a set in Seattle built to look like the building’s observation deck, so it still kind of counts. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: The Fabulous Baker Boys, House Of Games, The Parallax View, 10 Things I Hate About You 

Journalism movies simply don’t get any better than All The President’s Men. It helps that the story it tells—of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chasing down the story that would become the Watergate scandal—is one of the most mythologized in American political history. And it helps, too, that director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis performed something akin to cinematic wizardry to wring tension from small moments, which meant they didn’t need to rely on overblown or made-up details to raise the stakes. Instead, Pakula focuses on the work—sometimes maddening, sometimes mundane, but always in search of the truth. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: The Exorcist, No Way Out, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Independence Day, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Being There, Fail Safe

The only film directed by Oscar-winning actor Charles Laughton, 1955’s The Night Of The Hunter is nasty business and a film whose subject matter is so dark—its main character is a murderous, misogynist preacher with pedophilic tendencies and the movie wallows in sin and the lost innocence of children—that it’s no wonder it bombed and wasn’t reassessed as a classic until years later. It’s about as daring a film as you’ll ever see, with Robert Mitchum playing one of cinema’s greatest villains, a supposed “man of the cloth” whose wretched godlessness can only be defeated by, of all things, two children. For those who believe a film of such compelling perversity speaks ill of the Mountain State, fear not: it was mostly shot in Los Angeles. [Mark Keizer]

Runners-up: Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil, Patch Adams, October Sky, We Are Marshall, Logan Lucky

Bridesmaids stars Kristen Wiig as Annie, an absolute disaster as a maid of honor, who tries and often fails to wrangle the other bridesmaids in the wedding of her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph). The cast is a murderer’s row of comedic talent, including Melissa McCarthy in a breakout performance as the groom’s weird sister and Rose Byrne as a snobby, conniving bridesmaid. Bridesmaids is wild, raunchy, and sometimes pretty gross, but it’s also a touching ode to female friendship and the fear of being left behind. [Jen Lennon]

Runners-up: Mr. 3000, Dawn Of The Dead

Famous duo Paul Newman and Robert Redford star as the legendary duo Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid in George Roy Hill’s deconstructionist 1969 Western, set against the rugged, picturesque landscape of Wyoming (at least for the first two thirds of the film). Packed with charm, action, and wry humor, it follows the notorious pair who are forced to go on the run after a botched train robbery. Doggedly pursued across the territory by a relentless posse and a skilled tracker, they eventually escape to Bolivia. Until their luck runs out again. [Cindy White]

Runners-up: Brokeback Mountain, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Heaven’s Gate, Hateful Eight, Shane, Unforgiven