Nick Offerman: American Ham
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Nick Offerman has a way with words — and wood. Another Netflix original, American Ham bolsters criticisms of our pansy culture, partial nudity, and that time Offerman was passed up to play Gimli the dwarf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The former Parks and Recreation favorite takes a step-by-step approach in teaching us how to be a man while simultaneously and comedically deconstructing pop culture. Though you won’t find much Ron Swanson here, the man behind the mustache is, at times, far more interesting.
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Team America: World Police
Director: Trey Parker
From the minds of South Park‘s creative tandem, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, emerges America’s last line of defense against irate, nuke-holding dictators. After Kim Jong-il attempts to hurl the world into chaos via a pandemic of terrorism, Broadway star Gary Johnston (Parker) is adopted into the team after their former captain, Carson, is tragically gunned down in Paris. The irreverent writers take stabs at any and everyone, regardless of your political affiliation, and though the marionettes are terribly cheesy, they only add a new level of ridiculousness. We may never see a sequel, but we can still reflect on the time we had with our country’s greatest defense force. America, fuck yeah.
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Stand by Me
Director: Rob Reiner
Adapted from Stephen King’s The Body, Stand by Me is the swan song of childhood. It follows a quartet of boys as they search for what remains of a train wrecked corpse, as the four gradually come to terms with their impending age. A young Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix star in this more serious interpretation of the themes movies like The Sandlot and The Goonies touched on in passing. But be warned: It’ll probably make you cry. A lot. I mean, the Fourth can’t just be Roman candle fights and barbecue spare ribs, you know.
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Jackie Brown
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Yeah, I get it. Most of these aren’t your go-to American flicks, but Jackie Brown depicts the pursuit the American Dream more so than any movie here. Tarantino’s homage to blacksploitation follows the titular character (Pam Grier), a flight attendant, as she attempts to escape a life plagued with crime via one final, incredibly risky heist. Featuring the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, and Robert De Niro, Jackie Brown floats at a distance from the rest of Tarantino’s cinematic corpus, with minimal violence and a distinct lack of high-octane action that gives us the chance to dive deep into the distress of the film’s protagonist, expertly played by Grier. It insists that we appreciate what we have, and strive for what we don’t (ideally with significantly fewer arms dealers).
