50 Movies For 50 States
For our nation's birthday, we thought that we'd take a look at how the good old U.S. of A. has been portrayed on the silver screen. To capture the vast and diverse peoples and places across the whole country, we've decided to choose films that we feel really showcase each state in the Union. Every one of the 50 films we've picked features something special about the geography, history, or people of a particular state. So check out the map to see which ones we've picked!
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uh, I'm sorry, I didn't like Bull Durham. I understand that maybe the best film to represent NC, but nobody was likable in that whole damn picture. Plus it comes across really hokey now.
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Still good list and very cool map feature.
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Tennessee = Nashville...very original (you can't see me, but I'm rolling my eyes).
How about 'The Thing Called Love' with River Phoenix and Samantha Mathis...very cool, ya'll.
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Dances with Wolves... Your name is Stands?
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Thanks for using "We Are Marshall" for WV. I'm sick of all the stereotyping of West Virginia folk in some movies, and it's nice to see an inspirational story that meant something to us. If it were executed better, I'd be happier though. Otherwise, interesting list (especially with Bull Durham, one of my all-time favorites).
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"The movie's a big Hollywood action flick that's all about extreme California livin': beach settings, house parties, skydiving, and a whole lot of surfing. There are girls with weird hair, guys with ridiculous names, and a beach bum as your gun toting government hero. Only in California!"
Yeah and people in Iowa is obsessed with corn, Texans are a gun-totting racists, Alabamans are all inbred, those in Georgia are just waiting for tourist to get lost so they can rape them, and the entire state of Wisconsin shuts down for every Packer game.
I am so tired of the idea that we fit into three groups: radical liberals in San Francisco, self-obsessed wannabe celebrities in Los Angeles, or surfers. There's so much more to the state than that. How about Terminator 2, Pirates of Silicon Valley, Lethal Weapon, Back to the Future, Beverly Hills Cop, Scream, Die Hard, Speed, or Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Also you should have done Washington DC since it does have electoral votes.
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Point Break?!?!?! stupid...
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Life sure has a sick sense of humor, doesn't it?
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You said it, Bodhi!
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I dunno Jen, I think you could've used Breaking Away or Rudy for Indiana versus Hoosiers.. That movie was, well, kinda boring.
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Sorry, but Indiana, is Hoosiers sir. I am hoping that either you are not from our beloved state, or you have not lived there in quite some time. Rudy is a great, beloved all time classic movie. Breaking Away is iconic as well, but for the common person, yeah...Hoosiers is the movie that you think of when you think of the state.
"I love you guys....Team!!"
Great great movie....sorry if there are not enough explosions in it, but it's such a great movie.
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@LordVapor
Well, I didn't say Hoosiers was a bad movie, just slow. It was a good story. I'm from Indiana as well, and I would put the scenic scenes in both Rudy and Breaking Away much more depictive of Indiana versus a 1950's period piece.
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Yes, sir... The gal-darn only thing we have here in Nee-Braska is corn... And children... That's it!
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Us Georgia folks get Gone With The Wind? Meh, I guess that's alright.
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Yay! I'm real happy Pennsylvania got Sylvester Stallone's bruised face to represent us!
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Folks, we know we left out a lot of great films for many states in this feature, so we welcome you all to make a list of your favorite state films and leave a link here in the comments! Use our new Community section (in your user profile, next to your profile pic) function to make a list on any topic.
For example, I just made a list of 5 Movies We Considered Before Picking Point Break for
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haha, nice jab johnnyjonjon.
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hehe, no problem. I used to live in South Carolina, so any chance I can get to take jabs at NC I'll take it. Plus I got a ticket in Lumberton, so I still hold that grudge! lol
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I live in Wilmington, so not too far from Lumberton. That reminds me... Blue Velvet would have been a good choice for NC. It takes place in Lumberton, NC, but it was filmed here in Wilmington.
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@crystalwhiteeyes
I hope you are being just sarcastic on the meh! aspect? because "Gone With The Wind" is easily one of the greatest top 5 films ever to grace the silver screen & if anything, Georgia should be truly honored to have such a film to represent it. I mean what would you want? a Tyler Perry film? which are utter jokes let alone rip-offs of better & more superior films. His skills & faculty as a filmmaker & storyteller are just deplorable & outright inferiorly deficient. I mean you could easily fit him with such filmmakers as Uwe Boll, Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner, Ulli Lommel, Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer, Will Zens, Dwain Esper & many others. How the hell did he get put into the Film Academy? It's such a disgrace & almost sinful.
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For Alabama, "Forrest Gump".
For Georgia, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" or "The Legend of Bagger Vance" (but "Gone with the End" will do, for now).
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I definitely agree Forrest Gump for Alabama.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is actually South Carolina.
Not a Michael Moore fan at all, but to me "Roger and Me" would have been a decent pick for Michigan. Or hell, 8 Mile. Or ROBOCOP!!!!!
Good work on Delaware. I never thought about it, but it makes perfect sense.
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Virginia got screwed, but North Dakota made me laugh.
and my fellow Georgian's and I seem to feel a little let down with "Gone in the Wind," because we had to watch it in Georgia history, pre-civil war history, post civil history, elementary-high school history. Catch my drift, but because it's the most popular movie ever, I guess it'll do.
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I couldn't agree more with "Casino" being the pick for my home state. There are so many movies out there that use Las Vegas as a mere backdrop, but don't offer any meat or substance about the city. Scorsese's attention to detail (including the actual old local news station logos on the microphones) is pretty impressive. Although the story itself is modified to protect the not-so-innocent, this stands out as a fairly accurate portrayal of local legends Tony "The Ant" Spolatro and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. Nice inclusion, RT!
My second pick? "Honeymoon in Vegas" for its sweet inclusion of another Vegas icon, former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. Seeing Tark the Shark playing cards with James Caan is a little slice of cinematic heaven.
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Ugh, so you choose 'We Are Marshall' for W.Va over a great movie like 'Matewan'? At least try and show you're putting some effort into these list articles. I'm not trying to take anything away from the Marshall movie, but its pretty obvious which of these two films was better, and more important to cinema as a whole.
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I agree that "We Are Marshall" is a lackluster representation of WEST(By God!)Virginia. I always said if they never made another movie in or about West Virginia, we always had "Matewan". That movie nails the spirit of the state, dead-on. "We Are Marshall" tries too hard to give equal time to every real life character's story and tries so carefully not to offend or stereotype that in the end it's a bland drama, a bland sport movie, just a bland movie overall. "Matewan" has it's own independent point of view and with that it captures a unique spirit that existed in the historical period depicted in the film and still pervades in the culture today. Maybe in a generation or so, some other film will capture the West Virginia of the later twenty-first century, but still 22 years later "Matewan" stands as a spiritually truer representation.
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I registered just so I could say that I totally agree with you Larry. "We Are Marshall" isn't a terrible movie, but "Matewan" really tells the story of West Virginia and the plight of coal miners.
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I agree, Matewan is much more significant to West Virgina than We Are Marshall.
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I agree, Matewan is much more significant to West Virgina than We Are Marshall.
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We Iowans are pretty obsessed with corn. I grew up in a town that celebrated Corn Carnival yearly. Some stereotypes just fit. Haven't even looked at the list, but I'm guessing Field of Dreams for Iowa.
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and I'm right. At least you didn't go with The Bridges of Madison County. No self respecting Iowan would seduce Meryl Streep and her notorious anti-corn/pro-bridge agenda.
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